


No Luck

by Revenna



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Ever - Freeform, Explicitly, F/M, Gen, Humor, Humor??, I suppose, Just in case I wasn't sad enough, Just some drabble about the OG gang, Like, Spoilers, Young Arthur, Young Dutch, and standing unshaken, and to arthur morgan, arthur's son - Freeform, do it because its right, dutch compared sean to a young arthur so i wrote him a little more antagonistic, for bein a good boah, for making me not sure if i should laugh or cry, heavy alcoholism, i would like to dedicate this happy sad fic to taika waititi, just put a bullet in me, maybe ill put this in a series so i can write things that occur during the game that make me sad, maybe it'll be the prequel of a gay smut fic, no declared gays, no gays here boss, no relationships - Freeform, oh yeah, please laugh, put an end to these tags, sorry - Freeform, who even knows with me, why are you still reading these im not even describing my fic anymore, young hosea, young john - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-15 23:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17538137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revenna/pseuds/Revenna
Summary: In the beginning, there was no system. No assigned jobs, no widespread code, and minimal speeches of grandiose on Dutch's part. Just two scoundrels and their beastly sons, out seeking a better way of life.That was something Arthur really did want to believe in. Something better.Chapt. 4 Finished as of Feb 7, 2019. Proofreading before marking complete.





	1. An Owl and a Bat and a Bumblebee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dutch picked up a kid who was fixing to be hanged. Probably stole something or another. He's got a mean streak, but what twelve year old boy doesn't? I sure as hell did. Hell, I might still. Keeps stealing my matches, because he likes striking them, despite Hosea's best efforts to wean him out of it, and after a week, he has not come any further in reading. But it seems like real deep down under all that dumb, he does have a brain somewhere, seeing as he made it this far without dying. Hope he likes causing trouble, cause that's about all we do.
> 
>  
> 
> King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O
> 
> YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7NBD40v5sE  
> Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/5bnUCit3NzUP0uncsCR0v4

Aberdeen was a booming little town nestled on the edge of a long, flat lake that stretched out southwards from the road, and led out into the foothills away from the mountains that surrounded it to the north, east, and west. The hilly peaks shortened the day so it seemed there was always the pretty sight of a sunrise or sunset to be looking at as the sun dyed the sky over the mountains various shades of pink and orange and folks below dropped shells into their rifles. Every time the sky grew dark, the hills would fill with the song of wolves, ready to start picking off what little livestock Aberdeen could support, but in the settler’s eyes, every chicken lost was a pelt gained.  
A surprising amount of money flowed through this shabby little town, but it had nothing to do with either the livestock or the fur trade. The town was nestled on the eastern side of the mouth of a river that came down from the mountains. Just on the other side, over a wide wooden bridge, lay the gold quarry. Great walls were chiseled into the mountainside, chugging out pounds upon pounds of gold nuggets by the minute. It was a strange conglomeration of mountain folk here to seek their fortunes and wealthy shareholders here to keep them in their place.

 

   
  
It was a kind, sunny, temperate spring day when the horses came prancing in, stepping high like show ponies, and carrying upon their backs the very kings of the west themselves. Hosea and Dutch trotted along in front, Hosea’s noble old steed Shamrock keeping steady pace with Dutch’s shiny, proud little arabian. And behind them, Arthur and John tried to keep their heads straight. Arthur, on the back of an irritable Boethia, doing his best not to laugh as he steered her into Old Boy’s heels, and John, doing his best to ignore him until Big Boy finally had enough and let out a testy whinny. The clydesdale’s step haltered briefly so he could whip his head around to nip the air at Arthur, and damn him, he couldn’t help the laugh as the stallion stamped his feet, imploring John to do something.  
His so-called brother, ten years his junior, finally yanked the reins to pull his horse to a halt and broke his temper.  
“God damn it, Arthur, stop irritatin’ him!”  
  
Arthur didn’t miss the squint he got from over Hosea’s shoulder, but ignored it all the same, and laughed.  
  
“What? Ain’t my fault that horse don’t like you,” he pointed out, just as Boethiah flicked her ears back and tossed her head. The disgruntled snort told him she wasn’t too happy with him, either.  
  
“Quit lyin!”  
  
“I ain’t lyin. Look at his nose flarin’, poor beast has to smell you all the damn day.”  
  
“Arthur _._ ” It was Dutch that spoke up, waggling a finger behind him. If they weren’t on horseback, Arthur knew that damn finger would be right in his face, shaking like Dutch was scolding a dog. “Leave the boy alone. Twenty-three years old, and I’m still waitin for you to quit actin’ like a fool. And John, watch your language. You ain’t old enough to be cursin like that.”  
  
“Old enough to kill somebody, but I ain’t old enough to curse?” John pointed out grimly.  
  
“You ain’t old enough to do either,” Hosea snapped. “How old did you say you were? Eleven?”  
  
“Twelve,” he corrected, pulling Big Boy’s reins to keep him steady as they descended a hill. Aberdeen was visible below them through the trees, a strange oxymoron with its tidy, imposing log cabins dripping with wealth and bustling with activity.  
  
“Aw, I was just pullin’ your leg, kid, don’t take it to heart,” Arthur said, shining him a cheeky grin. John’s expression softened somewhat, but not much.  
  
“My name ain’t kid.”  
  
Boethiah seemed to share the feeling, appeased, but not happy, as she fell back in step along side Big Boy. They rode into town, and for once, they didn’t stand out as a bunch of high-rollers striding into a country bumpkin town. They were right at home here among the ritzy mining companies and bright-eyed outdoorsmen alike, so no real caution need be taken. And either way, they weren’t there to rob people. Not really, anyway. Dutch and Hosea couldn’t possibly turn their noses up to the abundant idiots sitting on nests of gold that was Aberdeen, but mostly, they were just stopping in. It would be an easy grab to teach John the ropes while they rested up from the long hike out of that godforsaken city further North, Burley, and Arthur would be able to stop in to see Eliza.  
  
He was nervous. He always was when he rode into Aberdeen to stay with them, but he was certain it was the nature of any man to feel unkempt and imperfect next to a pretty little thing like that. His initial impression when he’d gotten that letter from her, telling of a child on the way, was that he should stay far, far away. God knew what kind of blood could rub off of a man’s hands onto his son. But that parchment had been stained in places by teardrops, often smudging out ink where she had asked- begged him not to leave her a dishonored woman alone with a child. Her father had died in a mining incident when she was little, leaving her mother alone to support her on that kind of night work, and in the end, Arthur could not find it within himself to damn her to the same fate.  
Luckily, she had been very understanding that he couldn’t always be around. Not happy about it, but understanding in the least, and those few years that went by had seen a lot of post between them. Arthur sent what money he could, thirty dollars in a bad month, nearly ninety in a good one, to keep them fed and clothed while he was away.  
  
They pulled to a halt in front of the inn, the largest building in town besides the mining office, so that Dutch could go and spin them a pretty lie to cover them while they sniffed about. He shouldn’t be too long. They never really needed to lie that low in Aberdeen. The only law here was that of the mining company, and they didn’t care a lick what you did so long as their funds were untouched.  
Arthur waited outside with John and Hosea in silence. He figured he’d light a cigar while they waited, but as soon as he had it settled on his lip, he remembered he’d given all his matches to John. The kid wasn’t destructive by any means, but he sure did like the look of fire. Or something like that, anyway. He always said it wasn’t something he could explain, and even if he tried and did it well, Arthur was certain he still wouldn’t understand it.  
  
He pulled it away from his mouth, but must have looked pitiful enough to break his old man’s heart, because next to him, Hosea struck a match on his boot, and held it up for him.  
  
“Thanks, old man,” he grinned, holding the end of the cigar to the flame and puffing it a few times to get the embers even. Hosea shook the flame out, looking scandalized.  
  
“Old man is it, now?” he asked, holding a hand to his breast dramatically. “Arthur, you wound me.”  
  
“You goin’ to see that Isabel?” John butted in, ruining Arthur’s chance at an apology.  
  
“It’s Eliza,” he replied around the smoke. “And yes.”  
  
“You gonna bring her somethin’?” Hosea gave him those big, knowing eyes, like when you shine a light out at night and see the critters looking back at you from the brush.  
  
Arthur removed the cigar and let it burn a while, suddenly concerned.  
  
“... Should I?” he contemplated. “I already give her money…”  
  
“And I thought you were a hopeless romantic,” Hosea scoffed.   
  
"Hopeless, yes. Romantic, no," John said, smirking.

"Well what should I bring her, then?" Arthur asked, shrugging incredulously.   
  
"A necklace!" Hosea practically cried. "Flowers! Something that'll make her forget you haven't bathed in a week."  
  
Arthur's eyes suddenly grew wide as he realized Hosea was right. Sure he'd scrubbed grime off his face once or twice, but river water was hardly a replacement for a proper bath. Dutch would be wrapping up soon, and he probably wouldn’t mind Arthur dipping out early, so long as he didn’t need him for anything. He shook his head and tried not to worry himself too much. He couldn't smell that bad, right?  “I ain’t that big a sucker.”  
  
“Oh, yes you are, don’t think you can lie to me, Arthur. I see clean through it.”  
  
John piped up helpfully. “I think I saw some roses in that one house’s yard. Y’know, the big green one on the way in.”  
  
Arthur paused, one foot in the stirrup, to look back at them. He really shouldn’t entertain those kinds of ideas of love and family and romance and… well, flowers. But damn if he couldn’t imagine that pretty little smile when he showed up, covered in grime with a bundle of roses in his hand.  
“Alright,” he said finally. “Thank you, John.”  
He lifted himself into the saddle with ease, though admittedly, his heart was pounding away in his chest like a man behind bars. Dutch came out just in time to see him kick his spurs, and he waved to him.  
“Sorry, Dutch! I got a social call.”  
  
He caught a glimpse of the man shaking his head at him with a knowing smirk, just before he rounded the corner and lost sight of them.  
  
  
  
  
The little shack of a house was settled just by the waterside. The wood was half-rotted and sunken into the mud, but the outside was decorated with little cross-stitchings and patches of wild indigo and false garlic swamped the porch step. There was a fence, but only around half of the property. Most of it had given way to the pass of time.  
He saw little Isaac before Eliza. The boy was in the yard, chucking rocks into a bucket that was set on the fence.  
“Hey, boy!” Arthur called, hopping off his mare and practically breaking down the gate. Something real mean in his chest laid down and showed it belly at the sight of his son, and despite himself, he smirked as the boy shone him that crooked, almost-toothless grin.  
  
“Paw!”  
  
Arthur laughed as the boy dropped his stone and ran for him, opening his arms, because if Isaac wanted to be picked up, there wasn’t any stopping him. He caught the kid mid-flight and hoisted him onto a shoulder with a grunt. Arthur’d only been gone six months or so, but the kid grew like it was going out of style. He’d gone from knee-height to almost hip-height in just that short of time. Arthur wasn’t looking forward to the day he had to look up to wag a finger at him.  
  
“Where’s your momma, Isaac?”  
  
“She’s inside, makin’ stew.”  
  
“Is it good stew?” Arthur asked, taking it slow up the steps so Isaac could duck beneath the awning.  
  
“No.”  
  
Arthur spluttered out a laugh, trying dearly to choke it down before opening the door.  
  
“Don’t you tell her that, you hear? Else we’ll both get our hides tanned.”  
  
The door swung open to see Eliza tamping smoke out of a pot. Isaac had the right of it, apparently, but Arthur wasn’t going to turn down a good pot of stew just because of a few char marks. Compared all those “fire-roasted” pheasants Hosea forced down his throat, Eliza might as well be a world-renowned sous chef. She startled at the bump of the door against the wall, but clutched her hands over her heart at the sight of Arthur.  
  
Eliza Miller was a dainty little woman of plump build. She had a blockish, heart-shaped face and a button nose, and curly locks of dark golden-brown that hung down to her shoulders. Her eyes were dark, but soulful set in dusky skin. She was a mixed lady, far as either of them knew. Half indian, she said, but he had never heard of her tribe. Shoshone, she called it. If Arthur could safely make the comparison, he’d say she reminded him of a barn owl, all soft white down and big, black eyes.  
  
“Arthur!” Her voice was a meek, soft kind of thing. High-pitched, but hoarse from the crowds at the saloon. Her dark brown eyes fell to the bundle of tattered roses in his hand, and those ears that poked out from her hair turned red.  
“Oh, you dog,” she chuckled. “Are those from Old Mister Powell’s yard?”  
  
“Don’t matter where they’re from, they’re yours now,” he pointed out, holding them to her. Eliza laughed, covering her grin with one hand and taking the flowers from him. He hoisted Isaac off his shoulders as she found a mug to set the flowers in. The boy hopped onto the ground, nimble as a damn chipmunk, and ran off to the other room, yelling about something he found in the woods the other day. Arthur pulled his chair out and sat down with a groan, removing his hat to scratch the grime out of his hair.  
  
“Fleas again?” Eliza teased, and he chuckled something quiet and low.  
  
“Yeah, well. You know Hosea, always rollin around in the mud. He gets ‘em and then there’s no hope for any of us.”  
  
Eliza giggled, setting the tin cup of roses on the counter near the window. She’d met Hosea and Dutch, and because she didn’t know any better, she thought them two very charming gentlemen.  
“Where’d Isaac run off to?”  
  
“Said he wanted to show me somethin’.”  
  
“Oh!” Eliza said, the brightness in her eyes telling him she already knew what it was. Just as she’d said it, the kid was trampeding back into the kitchen, cupping in his hands… a leaf.  
  
“Whatcha got there?” Arthur asked, cocking an amused eyebrow at him. “That a leaf?”  
  
“It’s a clover!” Isaac announced, holding it up to him. It was crumpled and dry, laying in his palm like an abused dog, begging to be released. “It’s got four leaves on it. Mister Astor says that means it’s lucky.”  
  
“Course that old cook thinks leaves give ya luck,” Arthur grumbled over his shoulder to Eliza, who swatted him over the head with a dry rag. He laughed mischievously, and then looked back to Isaac.  
“Well that’s just fine,” he drawled. “Keep it in your pocket. That way you can make it outta damn near any situation.”  
“Uh-uh.”  
  
The response surprised him,  until he felt the boy’s hand fall into his own. He looked down to see the crumpled little thing sitting in the palm of his glove.  
  
“Mama says you do a lotta dangerous stuff. I want you to have it so you don’t ever get hurt.”  
  
Arthur held the little charm in his hand, thumbing it gently so it wouldn’t break. He looked back up with a slackjaw grin, and with his spare hand, he rustled the boy’s hair.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
  
  
Evening came faster than he would have wished, but no sooner than he expected it, casting the last of its light on the wall behind him through the west-facing window. Isaac was damn near falling asleep in his momma’s rocking chair, his golden-brown eyes drifting shut against the light, leaving Eliza and Arthur more or less alone. They sat at the table, their chairs turned to one another in the darkening kitchen. Arthur had already lit a lantern so they wouldn’t have to sit in pitch black.  
  
“He’s such a good kid,” he mused, resting his elbow on the table. “How old’s he now? Four?”  
  
Eliza nodded her head as it was propped up in one hand.  
  
“He’ll be five this winter.”  
  
“He behave while I’m gone?”  
  
“Well enough. But he misses you.” Eliza’s hand fell from her face onto the table, resting a few inches away from Arthur’s. “I do too, if I’m telling the truth.”  
  
Arthur felt something painful, but still warm and fuzzy, well up in his chest. He tipped his head down in a kind of silent apology, but Eliza knew what he was. Knew he couldn’t just drop everything he was for something he may never be.  
  
“I’m sorry, Lize. You know I can’t just up and leave Dutch… Someday, though we’re gonna get a bunch of land to ourselves, somewhere out west. Somewhere free. And you better bet I’m coming back for you and the boy.”  
  
Eliza sniffed a dry laugh through her nose and shook her head.   
  
“You got pretty dreams, Arthur Morgan,” She hummed, turning her gaze to the floorboards as if they were suddenly very interesting. Arthur couldn’t think of anything to say to reassure her, but he grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently. She looked up at him with a wistful, but realistic kind of look.  
  
Mary had been one hell of a dream, some time ago. But that’s all she was. A dream. Something pretty, waving at him from the other side of a set of prison bars. He didn’t want anything to do with that high-class life, and she would never get comfortable roughing it out in the wilds like that. Nor could she tolerate him leaving her alone so often.  
  
Eliza, meanwhile, was so real it hurt. The night he’d met her, she had been chasing a fellow down the stairs in the saloon, one of her shoes in hand. The man had insulted her, some way, somehow, and she had sent him running for the door with his tail between his legs. Arthur had only caught the end of it, but had the grace- or the gall, whichever- to trip him on the way out and watch him nosedive into the dirt outside. He’d had some to drink himself, or he would have left it alone, but he never had time to regret doing it. He laughed, Eliza laughed, he bought her some drinks, and it went like most of those stories do.  
  
When she wrote him to announce she was pregnant, and begged him for some kind of help, this is what they had worked out. It was just supposed to be his gesture of goodwill. To let her know that it was both of their mistakes, that she wasn’t alone, and they would pay in equal for acting a couple of fools. Give Eliza money, support the two of them, keep clothes on their backs and food in their bellies. But the first time he’d come back into town, and seen her holding a gurgling little baby of his likeness, he knew he wouldn’t just be able to turn right back around and walk away. Giving money turned into visiting, and that turned into staying with them a few days at a time, and that turned into… whatever this was.  
They weren’t married. They weren’t even supposed to be sweet on each other. But Eliza was a gentle, smart little lady with a sharp tongue. It was only a matter of time before Arthur had to admit to himself that although she was an accident, she was so much more than just that.  
  
They sat at the table for a long moment, sharing a wary kind of look. If he didn’t know any better, Arthur would say she felt the same about him.  
  
The moment of silence was broken by the sound of galloping and horses whinnying outside past the yard.  
Arthur was faster than Eliza to stand, his hand falling to his holster as he motioned her towards Isaac. A worry in her eye, she did as he asked, rousing the boy to bring him to his room. Arthur unholstered his pistol from his waist and rushed the short distance from the table to the door. His hand was slow to twist the knob and pull it open… only to let out an exasperated sigh when he recognized The Count, Shamrock, and Old Boy prancing about, irritated with how the boys had rushed them down here just to stop so abruptly. Dutch and John were cackling like a couple of jackals, while Hosea at least tried to act like he had some shame.  
Arthur kicked the door the rest of the way out, turning his head to call Eliza.  
“It’s all good, Lize,” he yelled, sheathing his pistol. “Just Dutch.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Arthur. Didn’t mean to scare you so bad,” Dutch called, soothing The Count with a pat to the neck. It was an apology, but only technically. Dutch still had a taunting edge to his tone.  
  
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Whatchu want? Thought we was stayin’ a few days.”  
  
“We were.” Hosea piped up now. He lifted his hat from his head to smooth the hair back. “But we found something more fun to do.”  
  
“We found Colm!” John called, apparently forgetting that they were in the company of decent folk. Eliza was in the doorway behind him, eyes infinitely more tired now that her son was nice and awake, clinging to her apron. All three of the other men shot John looks, each of varying annoyance for bringing up messy business.

 

Arthur didn’t feel especially good about this, but he never really did about leaving Eliza alone. He turned around to cast her a woeful look, and she returned it with a brief nod. She knew what he was.  
“I’ll write,” he promised.  
Still, he grabbed her hand from her side and held it a moment. That way, they’d part ways with a smile.  
  
And that they did. Arthur had a smirk on his face the whole ride out, long after the light from town had vanished behind them.  
  
“So where exactly are we goin’?” he asked after a while over the horses’ trot.  
  
“There’s a little gorge in the hills to the west. We heard some of Colm’s boys were causing a ruckus in Malta. Figured we’d check it out, see if we can’t be a thorn in his side,” Hosea replied.  
  
“And there may be some cash in it for us if we manage to save these poor folks from that damn snake,” Dutch added.  
  
  
“How long you suppose we’re gonna be gone?”  
  
Arthur lifted his lantern off its hook and shielded it from the wind with his body- but he didn’t have any matches. He set it back in its spot with a grumble of irritation. He’d been so busy catching up with Eliza, he’d forgotten he needed to buy some.  
  
“Depends on how long it takes us to find him,” said Dutch.  
  
“Couple months, maybe.” Arthur nodded his thanks to Hosea for the actually helpful answer, and began drafting his letter to Eliza in his head. Without thinking, he began to whistle, an old song he’d heard somewhere further north, when he was real young.  
  
Arthur hadn’t seen the bottle in Hosea’s hands until he passed it to Dutch, who took a long swig before tossing it to Arthur. He caught it mid-step, and without even looking at the bottle, poured some down for the long ride ahead.  
His mistake. It burned so fierce, he had to nearly suffocate himself to stop from choking it out, and the chill tingled on his lips long after.  
“What the hell’s this?” he spluttered.   
  
“Moonshine!” Hosea replied, catching the bottle as it was flung back to him. He didn’t wait for Arthur’s response, launching straight into song, the same Arthur had been whistling.  
  
_Frog went a’courtin he did ride._ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_

 _With a sword and a pistol by his side_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _Ki-mo, ke-mo, ki-mo-ki!_ _  
_ _Way down yonder in a holler tree,_

 _An owl and a bat and a bumblebee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_  
Arthur wasn’t a magnificent singer himself, but he whistled the part of the song that would usually be filled with the sound of banjo plucking. John knew the words, since Dutch had used them to teach him to read. To no avail, so far.  
  
_He rolled ‘till he came to his mouses door,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _And there he kneeled up on the floor,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_

 _  
_ _Ki-mo, ke-mo, ki-mo-ke!_ _  
_ _Way down yonder in a holler tree,_ _  
_ _An owl and a bat and a bumblebee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _He took Miss Mouse upon his knee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _And he said little mouse will you marry me?_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _  
_ _Ki-mo, ke-mo, ki-mo-ke!_ _  
_ _A way down yonder in a holler tree,_ _  
_ _An owl and a bat and a bumblebee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _Miss mouse had suitors three or four,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _And there they came right through the door,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_  
The sky was dark now, but they had their lanterns, and the moonshine kept their faces hot against the cold air. All except John, who wasn’t old enough. He accepted his fate and wrapped a scarf over his mouth. With the drink setting in, Arthur’s lips loosened, and he broke character to join in the song.  
  
_They grabbed mister Frog and began to fight!_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _In the holler tree ‘twas a terrible night._ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _Ki-mo, ke-mo, ki-mo-ke!_ _  
_ _A way down yonder in a holler tree,_

 _An owl and a bat and a bumblebee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _Mister frog threw the suitors to the floor,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _With his sword and his pistol, he killed all four,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _Ki-mo, ke-mo, ki-mo-ke!_ _  
_ _A way down yonder in a holler tree,_ _  
_ _An owl and a bat and a bumblebee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _They went to the parson the very next day,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _And left on their honeymoon right away,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_

 

 _Ki-mo, ke-mo, ki-mo-ke!_ _  
_ _A way down yonder in a holler tree,_ _  
_ _An owl and a bat and a bumblebee,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _Now they live far off in a holler tree,_ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_

 _And they now have wealth and children three._ _  
_ _King kong kitchie kitchie ki-me-o!_ _  
_ _  
_ _  
_ They rode down the ridge with drunken smiles, even John despite his sobriety.  
  
“Arthur, you used to sing that one all the time!” Hosea called.  
  
“Yea,” Arthur replied, a laugh hidden somewhere in his slur. “I went off one night to find some trouble to get into. Ended up in a bar with some farm hands, gettin drunk when I was no older’n ten. Two of ‘em got in a nasty fight… both ended up moanin’ on the floor, but they never stopped singin’!”  
  
Dutch and Hosea both broke out in laughter at that, while John threw his hands off the reins in frustration.  
  
“How come he’s allowed to drink so young?”  
  
“Cus we weren’t around to tan his hide yet!” Hosea replied.

 

 

 

  
                                             
  
  
  
  
  
  
They rode until sunset the next day, when the road stopped winding back and forth like a desert snake, rolling out into softer curves, and the little fur-trading town of Malta stood rigid against the evening sun. The taller, rockier foothills lay behind them in the west, imposing against the night sky. They set up camp sluggishly, every movement a struggle. John fell asleep halfway through pitching his tent, and Arthur kicking his boot didn’t do much to rouse him, so he ended up asleep on the ground using his tent and all its poles as a blanket. Arthur managed to get his upright, but did a lousy job of it. Hosea and Dutch both had put their work in, apparently used enough to this that sleep felt more like a luxury than a necessity to them.  
  
  
Arthur woke up with his face in the linen, eyes snapping open at the sound of a gun cocking a few inches behind his head.  
  
“Don’t move, cowpoke,” growled an unfamiliar voice, tinted with scot.  
Arthur did as he was told. His blood was racing, but his pistol was on his holster, and his holster was out of reach. Assuming he survived this, that was not a mistake he was likely to make again.  
He dared not move his head, but his eyes strained to see what was happening in camp. Dutch was sitting next to the fire pit, hands in the air and a mean look on his face. The same kind of look like man about to be hanged for something he knew was right. And nearby, Hosea was in the same position as Arthur. Lying on his back in his tent with a shotgun under his nose. John was nowhere to be seen.  
  
Three of them to hold up the residents of the camp, while two more rode in. They dismounted and left their horses with the others, twenty odd feet away to prowl with their weapons like cats, watching their every move. Waiting for someone to reach for a gun.  
  
“Should we take ‘em back to Colm?” one of the boys asked, his southern accent twanging. His companion cuffed him in the back of the head, supposedly for letting on who they worked for, and the boy complained at him with a long, drawn out “ _oowwww._ ”  
  
“Please do,” Dutch said venomously, eyes glimmering with pride and fury.  
  
“Well I guess we have to now, don’t we, moron?” The first Scottish one spat, and the chill in Arthur’s blood made him quiver as the gun barrel accidentally grazed his hair.  
  
Arthur thought he saw Hosea whispering prayers just before the camp erupted in noise. Boxes on the left went barreling through the air, the O’driscolls were blown flat on their backs, and little balls of fire rained down into the grass.  
Arthur’s ears weren’t ringing, they were shrieking at him. His eyes weren’t much better off, showing him two or three of everything, depending on where they focused. He struggled onto his hands and knees. Sound was slow to come back to him, and it took him a few minutes to realize that one noise was John calling out to him from afar.  
“ _Grab your guns! Grab ‘em!”_ _  
_ _  
_ Even flooded with adrenaline, Arthur knew better than to try and think. Once things caught fire, you stop thinking and start doing. Usually the thing someone else who already thought of something told you to. He dove for his pistol without thought, and whipped around. He didn’t have to hear or see well to know that the O’driscoll would already be on him. His rifle was half-aimed when Arthur whipped his pistol off the ground, and in one smooth motion, planted a bullet between his eyes. One of them was running off towards the woodline. The other was raising his gun to Dutch, who was already struggling to keep one shotgun barrel out of his face.  
Arthur’s vision didn’t exactly grey out, but he focused in on the two other heads that needed a bullet in them, and barely even aimed before firing two shots off. The man grappling Dutch collapsed, blood spattering his ear, while the other stumbled backwards to clutch the hole in his chest. Arthur was scrambling onto his feet already to help Hosea, but by the time he got his bearings, the older man had already driven a knife into the man’s throat. Dutch, breath barely caught yet, was already tearing the camp apart with his eyes.  
“Where’s John?” he asked Arthur, as if he knew.  
“The other one went off after him!” Hosea replied, wrestling to remove his knife from the O’driscoll’s neck.  
“Arthur,” Dutch started, but Arthur was already spurring off, one leg in the stirrup and the other half-on the saddle. Arthur knew by the sound of hooves that Dutch was close on his heels as he broke through the treeline into the woods. He was unsheathing a rifle this time, now that he had his saddle under him, eyes peering into the woods for any sign of movement. He strained against the reigns to bring Boethiah to a whinnying stop, and she tamped the ground anxiously.  
A few birds twittered as they flocked out of a nearby tree.  
  
“John!” He called, glancing around the undergrowth. There was a gunshot nearby, and this time, Dutch took the lead, sprinting down a slope towards a stream. Branches stung him as they whipped on by, and when the nearby commotion made him dismount, he landed in a tangle of fresh thorns.  
He was very quickly coming to dislike this country.  
Arthur yanked himself free into the clearing by the stream just in time to catch Dutch tackling the O'driscoll off of John and into the water. Arthur stumbled over to the kid, who was already scrabbling out of the dirt, blinking bloody tears out of a swollen eye. He turned it away from Arthur with a stubborn growl, but the older man grabbed him by the back of the head and forced him to look at him.  
The boy had a nasty looking black eye, and he was bleeding heavily from his mouth. Arthur would have told him to open it, make sure he hadn’t bitten off his own damn tongue, if the boy didn’t spit a tooth out on the ground before he could ask.  
Without saying a word, Arthur let John go and plowed into the stream.  
The water wasn’t deep, but it was fast-running. When Dutch pulled the O’driscolls head back up from under the water, his eyes rolled, probably because the tackle had taken him skull-first into the rocky river bed beneath. Unfortunately, Arthur didn’t feel any pity for him, and Dutch had the sense to let go of him to get his hand away in time. As if trying to behead him with sheer force, he got a running start in the water, and kicked the bastard’s teeth down his throat. He choked in response, drooling blood into the water. Arthur was almost convinced he’d really killed him, until he let out a half-conscious wail. That managed to make him feel some measure of pity, he supposed.  
“Arthur,” Dutch said, wiping blood off his cheek with a handkerchief, “take care of this limp horse, will you?”  
Arthur looked up to see his leader passing him his rifle, and he took it without hesitation. But aiming it at the moaning, pitiful sack of shit in the stream made him feel significantly less confident about pulling the trigger.  
Dutch must have noticed the hesitation, because on his way back out through the woods with John in tow, he made sure not to look back.  
  
His trigger finger twitched uncomfortably as the O’driscoll slowly came to realize there was a gun pointed in his eye, and he let out a horrified squeal, like a hog. Finally, Arthur shook his head and dropped the barrel, snarling angrily at his own damn weakness.  
“Get outta here,” he shouted, flinging the gun around like it wasn’t even loaded. “I ever see you again, you’re gettin’ a flaming bottle of shine to the face, you hear me?”  
The man, apparently still incapable of language, gasped his relief and scrambled up the bank, staying mostly on all-fours even after he was on level ground. Arthur sighed angrily at his decision, though he was certain either way, he would be irritated with himself. He put two fingers to his lips and whistled for Boethiah, and a couple seconds later, she came cantering through the trees, looking frantic as ever. She was a skittish thing, but loyal to a fault. She would prance and whinny and kick and toss her head at the smallest sight of danger, but in all her time, she had never once bucked Arthur, or left him for dead.  
He figured that warranted some head pats. Her nose poked its way into his satchel, but all of his treats were back at camp.  
Luckily, Boethiah knew he was a sucker, and it wouldn’t be long before she was getting fat off sugar cubes and wild mint. The buckskin mare started at a gallop without any input, because even if he was selfishly keeping them to himself now, she would have her share when they got wherever they were going.  
  
  
  
The campfire that night was quieter than most. Dutch was nursing a limp leg from tackling that O’driscoll, Hosea was trying to scrub blood off of his neckerchief, and John was all but brooding while he held a cold waterskin to his eye. Arthur was the first to speak up to interrupt them licking their wounds.  
  
"Where did you get dynamite?" he asked, addressing John. The boy looked at him with the only eye that wasn't hidden by a waterskin, looking damn proud of himself.   
  
"Found some in Aberdeen. Thought we might make use of it."   
  
"Coulda thrown it a little further away," Arthur pointed out. His ears worked alright, but they still ached deep in his skull from the explosion.   
  
"Alright, well next time, you can throw the dynamite."   
  
"Can't," Arthur said, snickering. "You got all my matches."   
  
"You want 'em back?"   
  
"Naw. I'll buy some more next time we're in town."   
  
Dutch and Hosea were silent thus far, but at least Hosea seemed present for the conversation. Dutch, meanwhile, was glaring into the fire with a fierce look in his eye.   
  
“So… we gonna get him for this?” Arthur asked.   
  
“Oh, I will have his head on a pike for this, Arthur, don’t you doubt that,” Dutch replied, and Hosea did what John and Arthur knew better than to do- rolled his eyes at him.   
  
A couple of months, indeed.   



	2. Lula Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Went into Malta yesterday to find out where Colm's hiding out. Townsfolk didn't know much about it, but then again, they don't seem to know much about anything. A dumber collective of sheep herders I never did see than those bunch. Seems Colm killed some folk over some information about a wagon, and that didn't set too kindly with them, so though they were wary of us, they were happy enough to help. Can't blame them for being cautious about us. Last time a bunch of armed strangers strolled through what little town they have, folk died. Hosea honestly couldn't be less interested in the matter. He took John into town to poke around and came out with a camera for the four of us to fiddle with.
> 
> Dutch had much better luck than I getting information. Seems like Colm's probably hiding out in that gorge to the west, Ram Drop, and is probably planning on taking what he can from that little shed of a saloon they got before he ditches town. Somehow, I imagine that will not go too well for him, what with us being out this way.
> 
> Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wyzTfdTe8  
> Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2L3KarpfPL3SCOUUQRari0

_His paw strolled casually through the front door, as if he weren't splattered in blood like a butcher, fingers sliding off the butt of his pistol as it slipped back into its holster. Arthur was sitting on the floor, being that all of their kitchen chairs were broke except for one, and he knew as soon as Paw came back, he'd take it for himself. The old man didn't say anything. He rarely did, if he expected his son to start asking questions. He just shone him a glare from across the room, waiting for it to come so he could claim innocence in any arguments.  
  
__Arthur probably knew better, but the curiosity was gnawing at him, and his heart was still fluttering with anxiety from the gunshots fired down by the road.  
  
__"You kill 'em?" he asked real quiet-like, knees pulled to his chest.  
  
__"Yeah," Paw replied shortly, already on the defense over the situation._  
  
_"What'd they do?"_  
  
_Paw pulled the last remaining chair out from the table, leaving snow in his tracks. Had the hearth been lit, maybe it would be warm enough to melt it, but Paw wasn't home often enough to warrant a fire. Arthur knew how to build a fire, if he could only bring the ax down with enough force to split a log. Or find some matches. Paw wasn't a real patient man, so he didn't really feel like asking where they were. The old man pulled one out of his satchel now and struck it on the rough side of the table top to light a cigar. He went silent a real long time, blowing smoke out from between his lips. It stung Arthur's eyes, but he eyes the flames hungrily. His sheepskin coat was heavy, but nothing except fire could bite through this kind of cold. After a while, Paw spoke again, but curbed the question._  
  
_"Where'd that coat come from, boy?" he asked._  
  
_"You got it for me."_  
  
_"From where?"_  
  
_Arthur looked at the floor a real long time. When Paw started asking questions, it was best not to look at him. Guess Arthur had one of those faces that just looked angry by nature, cus apparently, he was always throwing disrespectful looks._  
  
_"I dunno," he said finally._  
  
_"Killed a boy for it," Paw replied. Arthur's heart sank a little, and he pulled at the sleeves to move them over the backs of his hands. He already knew this conversation. Paw had killed him to get the coat, and he shouldn't be ungrateful. But he couldn't help but wonder if that boy had been anything like him. If he needed the coat cus his pa was too busy providing to ever light the hearth._  
  
_"Folks ain't kind, Arthur. Most of em' deserve to die, but I let 'em live sometimes cus I ain't so strong as I let on. Best remember that. Be better than your pa."_  
  
_"Was mama kind?"_  
  
_Paw got a distant look about him at the mention of Arthur's mother, his eyes all glazed over behind smoke as he looked to the snow outside._  
  
_"Yeah. Fore you took her to God, she was real kind."_  
  
  
_Night came by real sudden like, and lantern light floated around in the darkness outside. The door was kicked in, but the men payed no mind to Arthur as he lie frozen in his bed, terrified. There was a lot of yelling, and a couple gunshots, and then just silence. Boots tramped across the floor, leaving snowdust on the creaky boards. There was a muffled conversation in the kitchen, and then Arthur's door creaked open real quiet._  
  
  
  
_Arthur felt like hell, bound in rope, sitting across from Paw in the back of a cage-wagon. For once, he was the one shivering, not Arthur, despite his wool frock coat and flop cap. He had a gag in his mouth, or he'd surely be yelling obscenities. It seemed like hours passed in seconds, and before Arthur knew it, he was being shooed out of a small crowd in front of a hanging stand before the priest cried out._  
  
_"Lyle Morgan, have you any last words before you are sent to God for judgement?"_  
  
_A couple seconds passed._  
  
_"Let the boy watch," he yelled. The man took his hands off Arthur's back and the crowd of faceless strangers now looked down to him. They stood aside so that Arthur could see his paw, hands bound behind him and a noose around his neck._  
  
_"Remember what I told you, boy," Lyle said, eyes bloodshot. He bowed his head and the lever clicked. The rope twanged like a banjo._  
  
  
  
  
  
Arthur snapped awake to see a dark sky above him, laden with stars. The night had been a bit chilly, and dry and cloudless, so that when he looked to the sky, he was certain he was looking right into heaven.  They had moved twice since they got out to this country in an attempt to stay one step ahead of Colm. The first camp had been further west towards the hills, wooded lightly with aspen and maple trees, and the second had been in town itself. Only for a day or two. This one sat on the top of an open hillside in a small group of no more than three small shrubs. It overlooked most of the other hills further west, marking the border between foothills and prairie. His head filled with broken images of a hanging rope, he moaned and looked westward, where the horizon started to flatten. The sun was just starting to snuff out the night on the hills behind him, leaving the rest of the bedazzling stars untouched.  
  
Nobody else was awake yet, and though he closed his eyes, he knew he'd lost his peace of mind for sleep. It happened every so often that he woke up from a dream he'd already half-forgotten, and was left to moan and toss about in his bedroll trying to recapture that slippery mistress. He could either do that or resign himself to the fact that, whether he liked it or not, the day was going to start, and he might as well do something with himself. Much as he didn't want to put his hat on, he knew if he left it, they'd think he had been snatched or killed, so he plucked it off the blanket next to his bedroll and placed it on his head, rolling out onto the dewy grass.   
  
Boethiah was hitched to a shrub next to the tents, her head bowed against the branches in sleep, golden buckskin pelt starting to glow in the ever-growing sunlight. Arthur grunted as he pulled his boots on, and stumbled over, half-awake, hand pawing at her saddle. His rifle was still in its strap, looking well enough, but Boethiah snorted unhappily that she was being woken up at this hour, and stamped her foot, demanding tribute for her trouble. Arthur obliged, fishing a bit of mint out of his pocket, and she settled down enough for him to unhitch her.   
  
The hills here were patchy in foliage. The peaks were barren, carpeted in tangles of grass and weeds and wildflowers, while the shady spots in the little valleys were crowded with bushes and shrubs. Off to the east where they had come from, the tree growth became more consistent, but Arthur had done plenty of hunting in woodland, and wanted to try his hand at some smaller game.   
  
  
_Ranch outside Malta. 1884.  
  
_  
  
_Have not seen a tree in two weeks._  
  
  
  
He took Boethiah down the hill at a leisurely trot, so as not to startle the wildlife too much, until camp was hidden among the hills behind him. He didn't bother hitching his mare. She would appreciate some alone time to graze around through all these treats spread over the ground while he was out finding some food of his own. He slid the rifle out of its holster and ran the back of his hand over her soft neck before setting out into the knee-high shrubs.   
Mule's ear, Aase's onions, and bachelor's buttons left pollen on the shin of his pants, while fiddlenecks grappled with the denim, leaving prickles embedded in the fabric. He took it slow, step by step through the brush to ensure he wasn't tramping around, stamping rabbits out of their burrows. His rifle in his hand felt like an old friend. He held it outwards, at the ready, in case anything took him by surprise- good or bad.   
He would not refer to himself as an outdoorsman, exactly. He couldn't track, he hated being wet, and he couldn't catch a pickerel if he was starving to death and it jumped into his frying pan. But he had been hunting since he was old enough to handle a rifle without getting knocked on his ass, and if there was a man who could say he was a poor shot, he was no longer alive to tell about it. Most of the cold weather clothing he had, he'd skinned the animal himself. Really, he could accredit his aim to hunting. Not because it was that important to him that pelts be perfect, but because a missed shot meant he would have to put the creature through some misery before its end, and that always bothered him.   
Someday, he hoped to die by a nice, clean gunshot wound. Minimal suffering, plenty of glory, and a damn good story for whoever was around to hear it.   
  
There wasn't any sound to it, but a couple dozen steps away, the grass moved out of line with the wind. Arthur fell into a kneel as slowly as he could, gently bringing the rifle level with his eyes. The grass twitched again, and from between the flowers, a strange little bird peeked out. A partridge of some kind, surely. It cocked its head, peering around the brush, and Arthur held his breath in an attempt to remain still. It took another step out, followed by three or four others, and opened its bright red beak to let out a call that sounded like the belt on a steam engine squeaking. The fowl behind it glanced around, trying to determine what it was so worried about, and Arthur could feel his time growing short. If he wanted to take a shot, it was now or never. He leveled the iron sights with the first bird's eye, and pulled the trigger before he could second guess his aim. Four of them fluttered out of the grass, echoing the call loudly among themselves, just in case one of them wasn't aware that its friend had just dropped dead with the loudest sound they had ever heard.   
Arthur groaned as he pushed himself off his knees, swearing as a fiddleneck stem raked across the back of his arm.   
  
  
  
When he came back to camp, Hosea and Dutch were waiting for him with a crackling fire and a fresh pot of coffee. From a long ways away, Arthur could hear Dutch as he removed his hand from his revolver.   
  
"It's just Arthur," he said as he came into earshot, Boethiah following him without the need for a lead. She had followed him somewhat faithfully, on and off. He could hear hooves behind him for a couple minutes at a time, until she got distracted by something tasty, and then a few minutes later, he'd hear her galloping to catch up. The fowl was slung over his back like a jacket as he strolled into camp. "My boy, where did you run off to?"  
  
"Huntin'. Hosea" Arthur said, and held up his prize like an especially poisonous plant. "What the hell is this?"   
  
Hosea cocked an eyebrow at him, and pulled the coffee mug away from his face just to be a smart ass.   
  
"A pheasant," he replied.   
  
"Okay. What  _kind_ of pheasant?" Arthur huffed.   
  
"Think they call 'em... Aw hell, what's that name? Chakar? Kuchar?"   
  
"Chukar?" Dutch suggested.   
  
"Yeah!" Hosea pointed at him, as if there was any question who he was talking to. "It's a chukar."  
  
"Is it good eatin'?" Arthur rotated the carcass and poked the thigh with his thumb to test the toughness of the meat. Didn't seem too bad.   
  
"Sure," said Hosea, setting his cup of coffee down. "Good as any pheasant."   
  
"Well. If you're cookin', maybe I'll just head into town..."  
  
Dutch chuckled at that, holding his hand out to Arthur to take his mug, and Arthur offered it up like a beggar for coin.   
  
"Oh, what? You're too good for plain pheasant?" Hosea retorted, snatching the bird out of his spare hand, only to realize that he now had the responsibility of plucking the damn thing. He sighed and set it on the ground at his feet to start the tedious process, flinging feathers into the fire.   
  
"Naw, but maybe you could cook it just a might above the flame? Instead of right in the middle of it?"  
  
"I, myself, like a little bit of char. You're lucky I can't get my hands on any peppers. You think you know what fire tastes like now!"   
  
Arthur sat down cross-legged in the grass with a grunt, removing his hat to set beside him. Dutch passed his mug back to him and he brought it towards his mouth, cupping it with both hands in hopes of warming them up. It wasn't awfully cold outside, in truth. A light jacket did the trick while hunting, but his fingertips were a little chilly.   
  
"See, I knew when you picked me up, you was gonna try to kill me. Just wish you woulda done it by now, instead of slowly poisonin' me."   
  
This time, it was Hosea who laughed, rolling the pheasant over.   
  
"Don't worry. A little old jalapeño would be a quick death for you." Arthur took a long drink of coffee, refusing to wince despite the fact that it was just barely too hot to drink comfortably yet, and rooted around in his satchel until he found the fresh leather binding of his journal. He pulled it out along with a pencil and opened it to the last page, leaving the spine balancing on one knee. There were rough shreds of paper stuck to the binding where he'd torn out pages, most of them letters to Eliza.   
  
The most recent one, he could recite from memory. He'd sent it by Malta's post last week. Being how close the towns were, he wouldn't be too surprised if one had shown up in reply already.  
  
  
  
_Eliza,_  
  
_We are sleeping rough out in the foothills west of the mountains, near a little cattle town called Malta. I am not sure how I feel about having so little cover, and no matches, thanks to our newest friend John, but the wildlife is like nothing I have ever seen. I saw a strange little critter last night. First I thought it was a coon, on account of its tail, but then I got a look on its face and wondered if it was a fox.  Still unsure what the hell it was, but it was strange for sure. They have prickly little wildflowers that stab you in the shin if you look at them too long, and the folk around here are just as bad. I tried to talk to the locals, one of them a gaggle of girls, and got treated like a damn fox in a chicken coop. Apparently, the women here are one step away from nuns, and can not be seen in the company of strange men, let alone hold civil conversation with them. Hosea has bought a camera, pretending that it was for me and John to mess with, while he hogs it all the damn day. Business goes well, and if we are lucky, we should be back to Aberdeen in a week or two._  
  
_I hope the boy is well. That clover has me thinking maybe he spends too much time outside out of your care, but then I remember that you managed to get a letter to me when me and the boys were hopping states like the ground was on fire behind us, and I worry less. First morning here, John blew out my ear with some dynamite, and earned himself a black eye. From another outlaw feller, not from me. He's annoying, but he means no harm. Most of the time._  
  
_If and when you reply, send it to Malta, as we will be going straight back to Aberdeen when we are finished here._  
  
_Best regards,_  
_Arthur_  
  
  
  
  
  
He was drafting what he wanted to say for the next one, imagining her reply in his head. None of the sentences went anywhere. If he was being honest, he was just trying to throw away the time between now and when he went back to Malta to look for her reply. He struck the pencil on the page to dot the i in Eliza's name just before becoming aware of a presence behind him. In one smooth move, he snapped the book shut and leered over his shoulder, only to have it plucked from his hands faster than he could react. John danced away with it, but kept it closed.   
  
"You better give that back, boy," Arthur warned, glaring at him.   
  
He could feel Hosea's amused grin behind him, and Dutch was snickering behind his hand.   
  
"Careful, John. You're playing with fire again," Dutch said.   
  
"Was that a letter to Eliza?" the boy asked, stepping back a pace or two to put some distance between him and Arthur, who was standing up from his seat on the blanket. "'I sometimes find myself getting lost thinking of you.' You're kind of a sap under all that tough, ain't you?" 

John let out a surprised yelp as Arthur was up and on him in a second, wrestling him into a headlock. Arthur heard his journal hit the ground, and moved John's wriggling head out of the way to make sure it hadn't come open before he started herding John away from the fire. It wasn't an even match by any standard- Arthur had a head and easily a hundred pounds on him. As if just now realizing this, John started beating on the arm around his neck, calling for help.   
  
"Dutch!" he hollered, as he was dragged away from the campfire. Both him and Hosea piped up with advice.  
  
"Go for the eyes!"   
  
"Play dead!"   
  
"C'mon, Arthur, I was just playin' around-"   
  
Arthur shoved him out of the headlock and put him in front of him, so that he could wrap his arms around his middle section and carry him.   
  
"He said play dead, not dumb," Arthur grunted through a mischievous grin. 

The river was settled a little ways out of camp, just out of view. A long walk with a writhing, screaming, 98-pound beanpole cargo, but doable for Arthur. If John didn't already have the fear of God in him already, he sure did now. He flailed wildly, kicking and hollering and beating on Arthur.   
  
"No! No, Arthur, please, c'mon, Arthur,  _stop.  Arthur!_ Arthur, I can't swim! C'mon!"   
  
"Oh, shut up," Arthur laughed despite himself, shuffling towards the river bed. "Twelve years old and you can't swim. Never heard such a load a shit-"  
  
" _I'm serious!"_ John practically shrieked as his legs kicked out over the water, and the genuine fear in his voice convinced Arthur to drop him in the shallows. John danced out of the water like a cat with wet feet, breath heaving like Arthur really did just try to kill him. He keeled over to catch his breath a couple feet away from the bank, peering at Arthur around the whites of his eyes.   
  
Arthur crossed his arms in front of his chest.   
  
"You really can't swim, huh?"   
  
"No," John snapped.   
  
Arthur looked at the water, then looked back to John, incredulous.   
  
"Well," he drawled, "Go change your damn clothes. I'll teach you."   
  
" _No,_ " John said, shaking his head and backing up real sudden, as if Arthur was just gonna grab him and toss him in. "I ain't goin' anywhere near that river."   
  
"C'mon, John. you ain't always gonna have a choice," Arthur said. He couldn't count on all his fingers how many times he'd had to throw himself into the water to escape the law. "What kinda outlaw you gonna make? Can't swim, can't read-"   
  
Arthur stopped abruptly at that, looking over to the boy as he stood wretched-looking by the shore.   
  
"You read my journal," Arthur realized aloud. He held a finger out, pointing at him.   
  
"I didn't mean nothin' by it, Arthur-" 

"No, you  _read_ my journal. You read somethin'. I thought you couldn't read."   
  
John gave him a blank kind of look as if he was trying as hard as Arthur to parse the information. After a moment, a slack smile broke through the frazzled expression on his face, and he bowed his head so his hair hung over his eyes.   
  
"I guess I did," he chuckled, dark eyes sparkling like a coon.   
  
"Alright, well. You learned somethin' today. Knew there was some kind of brain under all that dumb," Arthur said, and laughed at the scandalized look John threw him. He started the uphill trudge back towards camp, winded from having hauled a squealing boy all the way down here from camp. "I guess somebody else'll have to teach you swimmin."  
  
"I ain't gonna do it," John insisted, but followed nonetheless. 

 

  
_He really thought I was gonna try and drown him._  
  
  
Hosea and Dutch looked surprised to see them trudging back to camp, apparently not concerned enough to get up off of their respective asses. Hosea cocked an eyebrow at them from the crate he sat on, roasting that pheasant-looking bird over the fire, and Dutch opened his arms, apparently amazed.   
  
"Nobody got shot? My boy, you might be the first to talk Arthur here out of something." he said, eyes bugging out at John. "Hell, you learn shootin' as fast as you learn reading and sweet-talking, we might have ourselves a new protege!"  
  
Arthur rolled his eyes and John shone out a cocky little smirk, but neither of them said anything. Arthur swiped a hand over his head to scuff his hair before bending down to pick up his journal, and then he tucked it into his satchel. If nobody was going to look for Colm today, he might as well head into town. Hosea's head snapped up from his cooking as soon as he realized he was heading for Boethiah.   
  
"Hey!" he called, waving his hand incredulously. "Where 're you off to?"   
  
"Gonna go check the post," Arthur replied, adjusting the strap around his collar bone.   
  
"At least stay for lunch! Put all this damn work into feeding us and you go runnin' off as soon as it's ready."   
  
Arthur looked to his mare, and then back to the campfire, where Hosea was looking at him with his arms crossed. He hadn't even really realized that his stomach was hollow, but now paying attention, he figured that hunger would be gnawing at him soon as he reached town. He shrugged in defeat and turned on his heel.   
  
"Alright, old man. But there better not be any of those hola-peen-yos in it."  
  
"No," the man said mournfully as he pulled the roast off the spit. "Couldn't find any this far north."   
  
He passed a leg each to Arthur and John, and gave the wings to Dutch, keeping the breast meat to himself. Arthur eyed the blackened meat suspiciously, lifting it up to take a whiff before biting into it. It was hot, and crunchy, and tasted like charcoal, but it was edible. He was breaking his teeth on the char when John decided he had some complaints of his own.   
  
"I miss Grimshaw," he sighed, picking black pieces off his meat. Arthur looked up to see Hosea eyeballing his own creation wistfully, and he let out a long sigh, apparently on the same page.   
  
"Me too," Dutch agreed, halfway through a wing. He had been riding with Hosea long enough that apparently he had developed teeth harder than burnt meat.   
  
"Where did you say she went off to?" Arthur asked, spitting out a tendon. Hosea squinted at him with beady eyes, but he was probably more upset about Arthur's table manners than any insult to his cooking.   
  
"Her and Bessie went south a ways," Hosea said, taking a hesitant bite from his meal. He chewed it like a cow chews cud, hoping to grit it down enough that it wouldn't poke holes in his stomach. "They said it was for business, but seein' how little they told us, I'd say they're probably havin' a drink in Paradise Valley."  
  
Arthur scoffed at that, trying to imagine those two sour women drunk. Bessie was a stocky, realistic woman with a narrow face and a thin nose and china-blue eyes that always had a way of peering around suspiciously from beneath a mess of hayseed hair. She always struck him as a very conscious woman. Conscious of herself, sure, but even more so conscious of others. She could tell you what you were thinking when you yourself couldn't quite figure it out. Arthur had tried to press her buttons before, only to have his pressed right back. She would hop on board a joke faster than a stowaway jumps on a boxcar, but she would rarely ever try and start one herself. No doubt her and cold-eyed Miss Grimshaw were poking their noses about wherever they were, rattling grown men out of their boots with smart comments and wild cat-looking stares.   
  


 

"They been gone a while, ain't they?" Arthur asked, flicking the leg bone into the fire. It let out an unhappy squeal as moisture hissed and popped, spitting steam out.   
  
"They're coming back soon," Dutch piped in, wrestling with a wing. "We're actually expecting some mail from them two crazy bats, lettin' us know when they expect to arrive. Arthur, would you-"   
  
"Yeeeeeah," Arthur interrupted, waving his hand dismissively as he stood up from the blanket. "I got it, Dutch."   
  
"Thank you."   
  
  
  
Boethiah was waiting for him. Apparently she was excited to go out again, because when she realized he was approaching, she lifted her head from the grass and pawed the ground, letting out a snort of impatience. He rubbed the bridge of her nose gently to settle her down before undoing the rope from the shrub he'd been hitching her to, and hauling himself onto the saddle. "Good girl," he hummed as she tossed her head and turned away from camp. She had taken no more than a few steps away before John stopped them. 

"Wait!" he called, scrambling off the ground. "Let me come."   
  
Arthur narrowed his eyes at the boy as he made a run for Big Boy, who was hitched to a tent pitch, of all things.   
"Why?"  
  
"Sick of hearing those two," he joked, but Arthur cocked an eyebrow at him. Whatever John was trying to sell, he wasn't buying. Wasn't even in the market. He had to work to lift himself into Big Boy's saddle, taking one or two test jumps before hopping up for real. The horse wasn't named Big Boy for nothing- he was a big, sturdy-looking race horse, young in the face, but old as hell in the eyes, with a dark brown pelt and a near white mane. Why in the hell itty bitty beanpole John had picked out such a big horse was beyond him. Arthur puffed up a bit, but didn't say anything to stop him.   
  
"Alright, then," he said, spurring Boethiah forward.   
  
It should have been a quiet ride.  _Should_ have been. About four minutes out of camp, John decided to start up a singing, and Arthur had to suffocate the urge to tell him to shut up. Why it irritated him so much more when John sang than Dutch or Hosea he could not pin, since he wasn't even half bad, but the godforsaken noise prickled in his ears the entire way. His song choice didn't help much, either. It sounded alright when women sang, or especially mournful old men, but John singing sounded more like wailing. 

 

 

 

 

_I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger_  
_Traveling through this world below_  
_There is no sickness, no toil, nor danger_  
_In that bright land to which I go_

_I'm going there to see my Father_  
_And all my loved ones who've gone on_  
_I'm just going over Jordan_  
_I'm just going over home._

 

He opened his mouth for the next verse, but Arthur, feeling as though he'd had about all he could, spurred Boethiah up to a gallop, forcing John to shut up and focus on the road. 

 

 

 

 

 

Malta looked like a mountain town that had half-sunken in the mud. Short buildings made of pale wood and concrete squatted in lines on either side of one road, with no side trails or parts. The eastern half was mostly commercial, and the western half was housing. Although boring to explore, it was an extremely easy town to navigate, and the post office stood out like a sore thumb with its blue-painted sign, the second building on the left rolling into town, just past the general store.   
Arthur got there first, Boethiah being much lighter on her feet than Big Boy, and practically skidded to a halt a few dozen feet away from an old man slowly hobbling his way across the dusty road. The stranger startled, and much to Arthur's stifled laughter, fell on his ass with a cry of fear. When he regained his bearings and stumbled to his feet, he looked at Arthur with a tomato-red face. Whether that was his embarrassment or his anger, Arthur could not tell.   
  
"Slow the hell down! You're gonna kill somebody!" the spindly man hollered, throwing wild gestures at him before stomping into the general store.   
  
John was almost right behind him, and was less graceful in containing his laughter. Despite Arthur's best attempt to shoot him a look through his own half-realized smile, as soon as the man was on his feet, the boy broke out in snickering. Luckily, the man had the mind to ignore this, or else not hear it, and they were left to hitch up, grinning like a couple of bobcats.   
Arthur led the way towards the post office, but apparently, John had his own agenda, as he trailed off back to follow the old man into the general store.   
  
"What you gotta buy?" Arthur asked, eyeing the town and the store. Hosea and Dutch weren't too keen on letting John go into town alone, and for good reason. Last time he'd done that, Dutch saved him from being hanged.   
  
"Stuff," he replied dumbly. Arthur furrowed his eyebrows at him, not at all satisfied with that answer, and John looked to the ground and kicked the dust, pretending not to see it.   
  
"Is it dangerous stuff?"   
  
"No."   
  
"Is it stuff Hosea and Dutch wouldn't want you to have?"   
  
John shook his head, looking up from the ground. Arthur looked at him for a real long moment, and then patted his holster, hoping he could avoid asking the question aloud in all this company, and John nodded, doing the same. So long as he had his gun, Arthur supposed it would be alright.   
  
"Be quick," he said, before scaling the stairs into the post office. John was running off towards the store, and Arthur was halfway through the door to the post office before thinking twice and leaning out. "Yell if you need somethin'!"   
  
John waved, but didn't look back. Shaking his head, Arthur stepped into the office, leaving a trail of dust on the floor in his wake. The clerk was a frail-looking old man- the last person who needed to be guarding a post office when there were outlaws in town. Arthur almost pitied the fool- after all, he wasn't sure what Dutch and Hosea had planned for this town just yet, and he always hated whipping real old folks. Some were so frail, they couldn't hardly take a pat on the back without falling over. 

"Good afternoon," the old man croaked cheerily, squinting out through the bars. "What can I do for you?"   
  
Arthur rested his hand on the counter and opened his mouth to speak, only to realize he'd forgotten the name Dutch was using for them here. His lips snapped shut and he held up a finger to buy himself a moment as he dug through his satchel. The scrap of paper had its own dedicated pocket for this exact reason, because the last thing he wanted to do was sit here and dig through all of his belongings for thirty minutes. It was beaten to all hell, and torn halfway through, but it was still perfectly legible, for whatever that was worth.   
  
"Mail for... Theodore Culpepper?"  
  
These names just got dumber and dumber.   
  
The  clerk gave him a wrinkled smile and nodded his head, shuffling to the post boxes behind him. The keys jingled as he lifted them off of his belt ring, and with the click of the lock, the box sprung open, revealing two letters. He pulled them out and took a shaky step back towards the counter. Then another step. It really seemed taxing for the man to walk, Arthur wondered if he should even be working. He could read the name on the first letter from here. It was from Eliza, of course. His heart did that bit where it jumps around in his chest like a filly, and he leaned on the counter in anticipation. The old man smacked his lips and took another step.   
  
There was a pop, and the old man let out a gasp as his leg buckled slightly beneath him. He dropped the letters to grab a hold of it, trembling.   
  
"You alright?" Arthur asked, trying to keep the edge off his tone.   
  
The old man laughed and gave him a toothless smile. "Just fine, son! Just gotta get my bearings."  
  
He bent his knee and stamped the floor once, then one more time for good measure. Wobbled his knee to check that it was still working just fine. He grabbed a hold of one leg and bent down, shakily reaching towards the letters. Arthur glanced at the clock- four minutes had gone by since he'd given the man the name.   
  
The old man snatched up the first letter, and inspected it, rising up from his squat, much to Arthur's dismay. He turned it over in his hand, making completely certain it was not harmed, and dusted it off, though Arthur could not see anything tarnishing it in the first place. Then he slowly lowered himself back down. His knee popped again, but it did not buckle. The old man checked it anyway, giving it a tap to test it. He knelt the rest of the way down and grabbed the second letter, and began to shuffle back towards the counter. Arthur unclenched his fist to accept the letters, but the man did not hand them to him.   
  
"You look mighty excited!" The man exclaimed, waving the letters about unhelpfully. He held one in front of his face, examining the text. "Eliza? Is this from a lady of yours?"   
The man gave him a knowing quirk of his eyebrows, and Arthur's fingers curled back into a fist, his knuckles whitening and his teeth gritting in his mouth.   
  
"Yes," he replied shortly. "I am very much looking forward to reading it."   
  
He had hoped the man would take the hint, but still he made no move to give the post to Arthur.   
  
"You know, I met my beloved wife, Agatha, through the post. That was many years ago..."   
  
  
  
  
  
Arthur kicked the door out from the post office and stumbled into the street, clutching the letters to his chest like a woman protecting child, just an hour or two before sundown. John was asleep against the side of the office, and Arthur woke him by frantically shaking him. The boy woke with a start, looking frazzled.   
"What? What's goin' on? What the hell took you so long?"  
  
"We gotta go," Arthur said vaguely, pulling him to his feet and herding him towards Big Boy. John swatted his hands away from him, glancing around and looking confused.  
   
"Nobody's shootin' at us," he pointed out, mounting his saddle despite the lack of motivation on his part.   
  
"No, but we stay here much longer, I might start shootin' at them."  
  
  


 

 

 

Arthur told John on the way back what had kept him, along with everything he did not care to know about the strange old post office worker, which he was certain was just about the man's entire life story. By the time they were back at camp, it was evening, and he would rather die than reiterate the entire thing, so he let John tell it as he tossed Grimshaw and Bessie's letter to Hosea and flung himself into his bedroll to read Eliza's by the light of the nearby campfire.   
  
  
  
_Arthur,  
  
I have been to Malta before, and know a few of the folk who live there. I'm afraid they treated me rather kindly, if a bit too kindly, as if I was in imminent danger of tripping and falling myself into some ghastly man's bed. Little did they know that I have already made that mistake once or twice, and do not plan on doing so again. You, meanwhile might deserve the reputation you have earned in such a small, delicate little town.  I am not certain how I feel knowing your indiscretion for other women, but I am not your wife, and I can make no claim to your affection as such. If you find yourself wandering, know that you do so with my blessing, regardless of whatever childish jealousy I may harbor. _  
  
_As for the wildlife, I know very little. I believe what you saw may have been a ring-tail cat, but I can not be sure, since those lands are full of peculiar little beasts, many which I have not seen for myself._  
  
_Isaac is doing well. He made a friend up the road, a boy younger than him named Earl. I can not say I approve, since they are so rough with one another, but they are young boys, and remembering the stories you tell me of your childhood, I can not help but feel that maybe they are more gentle than I realize. He keeps asking whether or not that clover has brought you any further luck, as if I can conjure up a letter from you out of thin air any time I wish. Attached is a drawing he has done for you, inspired by that journal of yours. I do hope you return as soon as you say, as both me and the boy are impatient, despite what you may do when you are not with us. I know you can not be hitched like a mule, much as I may dream. Do hurry on your way back._  
  
_Yours,_  
_Eliza  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_Arthur thumbed the edge of the page, skimming back over the words as if there would be something he'd missed hidden somewhere within the paragraphs. He had not seen anybody for a long time since Eliza. He had considered it, early on, before Isaac was in the picture, but nothing had gone anywhere, and he had begun to wonder very early on whether or not that was necessarily a bad thing. He folded the paper carefully, taking care not to leave any unnecessary creases as he tucked it into the stack with the rest of her letters in his satchel. He pushed himself up so that he was sitting cross-legged on his bedroll and tucked a cigar up on his lip, only to remove it with a sigh and leer at it, as if it were the cigar's fault he didn't have anything to light it with. Just as he was reaching to put it back, there was a clatter at his feet, and he looked down to see a box of matches sitting at the toe of his boot.   
  
John flicked him a wave from the campfire and turned back away from him, leaving him with a smirk. Must have gotten them from the store in Malta. He struck it on the sole of his boot and lit the cigar, then stood up to join the gang by the fire, taking a seat on a spare crate.   
  
"Eliza write back?" Hosea asked, nodding to the corner of paper peeking out of Arthur's satchel. He nodded and puffed smoke out from between his teeth, eyes falling to the embers as they tumbled to the grass.   
  
"She's worried about me chasin' other women when I ain't in Aberdeen," he said.   
  
Dutch looked up from the fire, cocking an eyebrow.   
  
"Aren't you?" he asked, a knowing smile starting to tease the edge of his mouth.   
  
Arthur scuffed a boot over the grass, not sure if he really wanted to answer the question now that all eyes were on him.   
  
"Naw," he laughed, and Hosea slapped his knee dramatically.   
  
"My god, we've lost him! Arthur Morgan, given up women for a life of abstinence! Next thing you know, he'll be askin' her hand in marriage!" Dutch cried, and Hosea patted him on the back, pretending to comfort him.   
  
"Now, now, Dutch! He had a good run. He'll always be in our hearts as the womanizing, bank-robbing criminal we knew and loved."  
  
Arthur scoffed and rolled his eyes at them, a wide grin on his face. His eyes were drawn Eastward towards the mountains, where Aberdeen lie nestled and homely. These fools didn't know the half of it. Arthur had five rings in his satchel, each stolen off of someone, but Eliza didn't have to know that part. He figured he already knew which one she'd like best. It was a silver band, studded with amethyst and a single diamond. He didn't say anything on the matter, but he pulled it out of his pocket and rolled it in his hand.   
  
John was the first to see it, and did the honors of announcing it to Dutch and Hosea so Arthur wouldn't have to.   
  
"You ain't serious!" he wondered, and leaned in for a better look. Arthur held it up to the firelight with a bashful, but steadily growing grin as Dutch and Hosea eyeballed it like a couple of bumpkins seeing electricity for the first time.   
  
"Arthur?" He looked up to see Dutch's face fall into a woeful look, and he shook his head.   
  
"Aw, I ain't leavin' you, Dutch. Eliza... She understands I can't be around too often, but. It wouldn't be the first marriage of its kind."   
  
  
  
There was a little moment of quiet for everyone to get their bearings, and then they broke out in celebration. That night, they passed whiskey around the campfire, laughing and joking and making fun of Arthur all the while they patted him on the back in congratulations. Hosea pulled out a banjo and they sang until the middle of the night and then all passed out in their bedrolls, faces warm and bellies full of drink and venison stew. Arthur stayed awake- not by choice, necessarily, but he greeted the sunrise with a soft kind of grin, like an old friend, before sleep finally took hold and he drifted off, ring in his pocket and a little clover tied into the page of his journal by a piece of twine. 


	3. Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should be wrapping things up with Colm in the next few days. Now that we know for sure that he's hiding out nearby, it's only a matter of time until we meet him, and bullets start flying. I don't really understand why Dutch is so hellbent on seeing him hang. A meaner varmint I never did meet than Colm O'driscoll, and I know Dutch lost his sweetheart to him, but I can not imagine myself ever holding that kind of anger. Of course, I have not been in his circumstances, and I can not speak for how he feels on the matter. I suppose that the things Colm has done warrant justice, even if it has to come from such uncivilized folk as us.  
> I am doing my best not to feel anxious about returning to Aberdeen. I plan on asking her in person, but for the butterflies in my chest, I wonder if I am really so brave as I might like to imagine. The thought of her answer, be it yes or no, gives me the best kind of stomach ache I have ever had. If it is a no, I hope I am strong enough to handle it, and if it is a yes, then doubly so.

Arthur leaned up against the back of the post office, armed with tooth, nail, and no less than three different guns. Dutch always talked big about Arthur in front of strange folks, treating him like a prize fighting dog on a tether and trying to convince them he didn't bite, and for once, Arthur meant to look as mean as he did. He lifted his prize rifle up to check one more time that the chamber was loaded, and cocked it just in case things got ugly too quick to waste time on it later.   
  
Dutch's plan went something like this:  
  
Colm wasn't going to be sticking around much longer in these parts on account of them being here. He had too many men at his disposal to jump his camp. That would be a losing fight, but he also wasn't just going to pack up and leave a perfectly good town unplundered just because they were in his hair. They had been taking turns scouting the road day and night, poking their noses into every shop they could find as quietly as they could, looking for O'driscoll scouts, because Colm wasn't dumb enough to hold up anything without a good clear picture of what he was walking into, and this morning, Hosea had galloped into camp, shouting for them to follow him back to town. Sure enough, they rode in just in time to see two O'driscolls mounting up and heading out from the post office, armed, but empty-handed.   
  
So now, the gang was lounging about in this dusty town, waiting for the O'driscolls to do the hard work so they could hold them up on the way out. They take the money, the O'driscolls take the blame, and Colm gets a reminder of the thorn in his side. Arthur had taken up the back of the post office, while Hosea camped in the alley between that and the general store. Dutch was on the other side of the street, hanging out around the butcher's stand, because although he never dressed down from his typical flamboyant red vest, funnily enough, it helped him blend in with all that blood. There had been no shortage of jokes referring to him as a reptile while they rode in.   
  
Right around noon, Arthur was drifting off to sleep against the wall, having gone back through and read damn near his entire journal out of sheer boredom, when a loud whistle that he recognized as Hosea's rang out from the street behind him. That would be the signal. Urgency renewed, Arthur scrambled off his ass, snatching his rifle up, pulling his bandana over his nose. and rushing around the corner to the front door. Dutch met him there, having jogged over from the other side of the road. They each took up one side of the door, guns unholstered. Hosea was poking his head out from the corner of the nearby general store, ready to cover them should any more ride in. There was an angry shout from inside the post office, and it wasn't the old man Arthur had met.   
  
A couple of long, long moments passed in silence. Arthur's trigger finger itched, and Dutch's eyes were glued to the door like it was about to explode. Hosea stifled a cough.   
Then, the door swung open, and with unity that rivaled the army, Dutch and Arthur twirled out of hiding, guns raised to the two men that came out, eyes bugging out from their heads in surprise.   
  
Fortunately, neither of them were Colm, or Dutch would have pulled the trigger, and then they would be in for some real hell. The one on the left, closest Dutch, was a skinny feller with curly rowan hair and snake-like eyes. He already had his weapon drawn, but upon realizing his companion did not, he lowered it, looking sour.   
  
"Hello, boys," Dutch sang, that wolfish look in his eye as he saw the bags slung around their shoulders. "That looks awful heavy. Why don't you hand it on over?"  
  
The man closest Arthur took one look at him and put his hands in the air, while his partner shrank uneasily, apparently not persuaded by the pistol between his eyes.   
  
"What're you doin'?" Arthur's man, a heavy set feller with a gentle face and hayseed hair, hissed at him, knees quaking.   
  
"I-... I'm afraid I can't do that," the other one stammered, somewhat bolder than his friend.   
  
"I don't see you have a choice," Arthur gritted angrily, poking the blonde in the chest with a rifle. He let out a squeak, and shot the other O'driscoll a look of panic.   
  
"Give him the money, Jason!" he begged. Dutch's man looked at him like he just spat on his mother.   
  
"What about not using real names is it you don't get?" he damn near shouted, only to be reminded of his manners as Dutch cocked his pistol.   
  
"You've got ten seconds, Mister Jason," Dutch said. "Ten. Nine..."   
  
"He'll do worse than kill us if we hand it over," Jason said, shrinking impossibly more. Dutch let out a dramatic sigh, and motioned to Arthur. Normally, he'd be on the fence about kicking somebody to death, but he knew from experience that there were no innocent O'driscolls. Colm only picked up the worst type of man. So with one quick movement, he swiped the butt of his rifle over Jason's cheek, knocking him to the ground. His head hit the wood with a snap, and he let out a nasal kind of snarl, spit some blood on the ground.   
  
"Eight," Dutch sneered. The brunette shot him a gritty look that said he probably wasn't going to comply, so Arthur raised the butt of his rifle again, but the O'driscoll nearest him cried out before he could bring it down.   
  
"Alright! Jason, I'll take the blame, please God, just give him the money," he begged, slowly moving to lift his satchel off his shoulder.   
  
Jason lifted himself up so he was sitting, blood spattering his lip, and gave Arthur's man a look full of piss and vinegar.   
  
"Neil, yer a fuckin' moron," he growled, but when he looked up at Arthur, whose rifle was still lifted at the ready to strike him again, he sighed and removed his cargo. Arthur lowered the barrel of his gun so it was pointing at the men while Dutch knelt down and pulled the bags away from them. He only even had to open them and glance inside before he got this big, wide grin on his face, and picked up one in each hand like a couple of trophies.   
  
"Thank you, gentlemen, for your cooperation," he said giddily, and looked over his shoulder to Hosea, and then to Arthur respectively. "Grab the horses. Let's get the hell out of here."   
  
Hosea whistled, and that lean, black Shamrock came cantering in from the prairie with The Count and Boethiah shortly behind him. Arthur kept his rifle aimed as he backed away from the two men, waiting for Hosea and Dutch to get saddled before he dare look away. Folks always had a habit of reaching for their gun soon as there wasn't one aimed back at them.   
The horses tamped their hooves behind him, and Dutch called out.   
  
"Alright, Arthur, c'mon!"  
  
Feeling Boethiah's nudge against his shoulder, Arthur dropped his aim and latched onto her saddle. She was already prancing anxiously, but the second he was secured, she was off, dancing around gunshots as they bit the dust by her feet. Arthur had one foot in the stirrup, but was far from saddled. He clung to Boethiah's flank with both hands, one foot dangling to the side as the other held him in stirrup. Dutch shouted something at him, but he couldn't hear him past his own laughter as he drew his pistol from his holster, and fired some shots back at the O'driscolls. They were scrambling onto their horses now, spurring off after them. One of them, Jason, the poor fella who Arthur had beaten with a rifle, took a shot to the knee and fell screaming back off the horse's back, leaving just Neil.   
Surprisingly, he didn't chase after them. As soon as he was clear of the general store, he veered off the road and steered northwards.   
  
Beneath his grasp, Arthur could feel his own saddle rotating with all the weight he was putting on its one side. He tried to correct it by wrapping his hands around Boethiah's neck, but she was riding hard and her head was bobbing, so despite his best efforts to cling to the side of a galloping horse, he felt his grip slip and fell to the ground.   
  
He saw the ground, and then the sky, and then the ground, and then it all kind of became the same damn thing as he tumbled through the shrubs, dirt clawing through his shirt and trousers and tearing up his suspenders. After a couple seconds, he quit rolling, but the sky didn't quit spinning, and he lay in the shrubs, trying to figure out if he'd broken all of his limbs or not. Sure felt like it. Hosea's voice was somewhere off in the distance, but then he was kneeling right next to him, his mouth moving like he was talking. Arthur wailed like a dying cow when he lifted him off the ground, putting pressure on his aching shoulder, but as he sat up, his hearing started coming back through the roaring in his ears.   
  
"C'mon, Arthur, we gotta get out of here! Who knows how many they got comin'."   
  
Arthur waved his hands away from him and struggled to his hands and knees. Getting up was another matter. Burrs bit the palms of his hands as he shoved off the ground and stumbled painfully to his feet with a breathless laugh. Boethiah was dancing about in the brush, thoroughly irritated with his antics, but she came trotting over as soon as she realized he wasn't dead. He gave her a quick pat on the nose for her trouble, since she shoved her face into his hands, nearly knocking him back over, but they didn't have time for a proper pet right now.   
  
"I'm fine, Hosea, but we got a problem. That Neil feller, he road off..." Arthur spun around, trying to orient himself when the sun was right overhead. Malta stood a little ways off, and from it popped another gunshot. He ducked instinctively as the bullet sang past him, a little less than a foot away from his skull. He wasted no time then, getting back up in the saddle, properly this time, before spurring Boethiah back off. Hosea was quick to follow, and together they set off towards Dutch, who was waiting with The Count not too far off, pistols drawn as he made sure nobody was riding in. Arthur waited until they were regrouped and riding back southwest to finish his thought.   
  
"That Neil feller ran off somewhere thataways," he yelled over the horses, waving Northwards. "Think he was goin' to grab backup."   
  
Dutch tossed a bag of money to Hosea, who caught it in one hand with a laugh.  
  
"Almost certainly," Dutch called with a wiley smile, "but we are going to be long gone before then, my boy!"  
  
"John's already packing up back at camp," Hosea added helpfully.   
  
This was the first he was hearing of it, but it seemed like he was never included in the planning, just the plan itself, anyway. He never knew what was going on until the gunfire started, so he just nodded his head and focused on riding.  
  
  
  
  
Sure as day, John was waiting for them back on the hilltop that used to be camp, now reduced to nothing but a pile of luggage, the cart Dutch had bought in Malta, and the smoldering corpse of a campfire. Big Boy was sniffing at the coals warily, making sure it wasn't going to light up again. John was sitting on a crate, kicking grass moodily as they rode up, and when he saw them, he looked up with a pout.  
  
"How come you fellas always get to do the robbin' while I'm stuck packin' up camp?"  
  
The question was directed towards Dutch and Hosea, but Arthur answered for them as he hopped off Boethiah.   
"You're too small," Arthur replied as he strolled over, hoisting a rolled up tent onto his shoulder. "A bullet would just about shoot your leg clean off."    
  
"That ain't true," John argued, rising to his feet to help store their belongings on the horses.   
  
"No, it's true," Dutch said, foreboding. Arthur set the tent on the back of his mare and Dutch secured it there, tying to the saddle. "I've seen it happen before."  
  
John snorted irritably through his nose and bent down to pick up a crate. He tottered a bit as he lifted it, hands scrabbling to get a grip on it. Arthur held his hands out in an offer to help, but John shot him a look and kept on a' hobbling, letting out a grunt as he dropped it into the wagon. It let out a noise that sounded an awful lot like expensive things breaking and Arthur winced, but he didn't say anything on account of the boy's delicate pride.   
  
"Hey," he spoke up, suddenly remembering about Susan and Bessie. "When're the queens of Wyoming due back? Shouldn't we stick around until they show up?"  
  
"Nope!" Hosea replied cheerfully. "They're meeting us in Aberdeen. Should be there in a few days, if they ain't already waitin' on us."   
  
"Alright."   
  
Packing up always felt like slow going, no matter how much effort they put into making it quick, and right about now, it seemed pretty important that they show a little bit of hustle. That little scrap in Malta drew quite a bit of unwanted attention from the townspeople, and if they were lucky, Colm would only just now be hearing about it. An hour could mean the difference between a clean escape and a violent shootout.   
  
Hosea was quick to start up a singing, and John and Dutch were eager to join in. They may have convinced him last time with a bit of drink, but seeing as there was not a bottle in his hand at this very moment, Arthur decided he would sit out on this one. It was nonetheless a nice background noise to have while he worked away, moving crates and tents into the cart for Big Boy to pull.   
  
_Black Jack David came a ridin' through the woods,  
__He sang so loud and gaily!_  
_Made the hills around him ring_  
_And he charmed the heart of a lady,_  
_He charmed the heart of a lady!_  
  
  
  
By the time they were ready to go, the sun was starting to fall, though the sky was as bright and blue as it had been an hour or two ago, and the wildlife had yet to call it a day. They set about at an almost leisurely pace. It would be Big Boy's first time hauling a wagon, as far as they knew, and John insisted on taking it easy, despite the fact that Big Boy could, if he so chose, trample that thing to bits. It was hardly the size of two bathtubs, and they had very few especially heavy belongings. Nonetheless, they weren't in too much of a hurry, so long as Colm was behind them, and not just over the hill, marching an army of outlaws towards them. The hills became bigger the further east they went, trees beginning to sprout from the landscape. Aspens came first, with their pale, skinny trunks and bright, fresh green leaves, and then the maples, their branches awning overhead like rafters, shielding them from the last of the sun's rays.   
  
Foothills started to become mountains, rising up and piercing the sky, taller and taller as if it were a race to see which could reach the clouds first.   
Night came quicker than they were expecting, having grown accustomed to the long days outside of the mountains, but it came temperately, the wind carrying a light chill to it. The weather was kind enough that they felt comfortable to lay out their bedrolls on the ground without tents or a fire, and that night, they slept bare beneath the stars. Arthur watched them as he lay in the dark, surrounded by friends in a comfortable doze- or as comfortable as he could get, his arms and legs flowering with dark bruises, his skin rashing in places, and his head aching from the tumble he'd taken out west. Really, he blamed Boethiah, for spurring off too soon.   
Stupid horse, he thought as he drifted away.   
  
  
He woke up to the piercing shriek of a whinny that came from Shamrock, his black shape rearing up against the night sky. At his cry, the rest of the horses joined in, bucking and stamping in panic. Arthur sat up, head spinning with sleep, ready to get into a fistfight with a horse if it meant they'd shut the hell up.   
  
And then he heard the snarl. He looked to each of the bedrolls, freezing to a stop when he saw the pair of shining eyes over Hosea, who looked as pale as the moonlight, and still as a stone. The wolf had its teeth bared, hackles raised, but it was growing bolder now that it realized the horses were hitched, and therefore, incapable of trampling it to death. Arthur sat there, frozen in the night, trying to figure out what the hell the creature was thinking, facing down so many people alone, when he noticed the undergrowth moving behind it, and more eyes popping out.   
  
Him and his big mouth, huh?   
  
Dutch and John were awake too, but about as helpful as Arthur was being. The wolves were forming a semi-circle around them on the other side of camp from the horses, now that they realized they weren't running or fighting. Arthur's fingers trembled as they hovered over the ground, towards his revolver. His rifle was just behind him, which was guaranteed a kill, but he would never get it loaded and cocked in time before the wolves realized they had some easy kills on their hands. One of the creatures poked its nose through the grass to his right, and the forest stopped moving. They were all out of hiding now. He counted six of them, in total, thank god. One more and he'd have to pull a knife.   
He held his breath, eyes sharpening like a cat in front of a mouse, and snapped his revolver up. It was just him, his gun, and twelve eyes that needed bullets in them.   
The gun snapped backwards as the first shot was fired, and he fanned the hammer to push it back after each swift shot. Four wolves went down, dead as door nails. Hosea let out a grunt as one dropped down on top of him, another started thrashing, shrieking and whimpering, and the last lunged as it came running for camp.   
Dutch fired at the charger, downing it with two shots to the face, and the last bullet sailed out from John's bedroll, where he was safely cocooned like he'd just woken up from a nightmare.   
  
With the howling stopped, and wolf carcasses sprinkling camp, the gang looked at one another, treasuring their breaths. It was quiet until Hosea piped up in anguish.   
  
"Get this damn thing off of me!" he cried. John crawled out of his bedroll, face white as a ghost, and Dutch sheathed his pistol, motioning to Arthur.   
  
"Build us a fire," he sighed, and Arthur nodded his head assuredly.   
  
  
  
_Hosea did his best to get eaten._  
  
  
Most of them were too shaken to sleep after that. Dutch was out in a few hours, while the rest of them laid in their beds and stared at the stars, waiting for their blood to stop pumping in their ears.   
  
When morning came, they were all exhausted and despite Dutch's best efforts, he could not manage to rouse anyone before noon. However, the additional rest combined with everyone's leftover adrenaline made for some very quick packing, and no more than seven minutes after everyone was up, they were moving again, regretting the decision not to make coffee.   
  
Only on nights like that did civilization look so appealing to Arthur. Aberdeen nestled in the wilderness looked to him like a pigeon on a warm batch of hatchlings does to a fox. Of course, maybe that metaphor fit Dutch better than it did him, since he wasn't here for the robbing, and had specifically begged Dutch and Hosea not to make an ass out of themselves while in town. Soon as he had his answer from Eliza, and the roosters had collected their hens, they could skip town and cause as big of a mess as they so desired somewhere else. For now, all anyone wanted was to find their women and hunker down in the saloon to lick their wounds. 

  
They rode in like they'd been riding for weeks instead of a few days. Even the horses looked exhausted from all that panic the night before, and seemed glad to be hitched outside of the saloon, where Bessie and Susan were supposed to meet them. Big Boy let out a real quiet snort as John tied him up, and rested his great big head on the hitching post contentedly, while Boethiah still stood upright, peering around as if more wolves were bound out of the brush any second. The men filed up the saloon stairs like a bunch of mourners, their heads hung, and nobody said a damn thing until they were tucked comfortably in at the bar, each with a drink in hand.   
As they sat and waited and drank, lips started to loosen and John once again was given an opportunity to roll his eyes at the bunch of fools that he had the pleasure of riding with.   
  
"Jesus, ain't they here yet?" Arthur asked, taking a sip from his water and gin.   
  
"Oh, I'm sure they're taking their sweet old time," Hosea responded. Dutch rolled his eyes and John let out a huff of impatience as he laid his head on the bar, apparently not over the fact that he wasn't allowed to drink.   
  
"They's gonna take forever. Where were they coming from?"   
  
"Paradise," Dutch said, waving his hands dramatically, apparently not impressed with the town's name. "It's about a day and a half's ride, but they should be in today."   
  
"So long as the cold don't get to Grimshaw. Y'know lizards like that, they don't do so well out of the sun..."   
  
Arthur got a playful swat on the back of the head for the comment, courtesy of Hosea, who laughed at it anyway.   
  
"You be nice to Grimshaw," he advised, wagging a finger. "Where would we be without her?" 

"Jail."  
  
"Dead."   
  
"Hanged."   
  
  
Arthur, Dutch and John all replied at the same time, sharing wiley grins.   
  
The day crawled by for a while as they scouted out the saloon, waiting for a card game to start and looking with woeful eyes at the mischief waiting to be caused that they were strictly prohibited from starting up themselves. After a while, a couple of fellers sat down with a deck of cards and held them up like trophies, and that was all the invitation anyone needed. Dutch and Hosea were out of their seats in a second. John was the first up, but Hosea grabbed him by the head and gave him a gentle, playful push backwards to make sure he got there first. John didn't have the patience for a game anyway, he didn't need a chair.   
Arthur stood up, but didn't bother trying to race the three of them to the table. He wasn't really interested in waiting around for the next few hours, giving his money away in an attempt to occupy his time. Dutch plopped into the chair and looked up at him.   
  
"You off to Eliza's already?" Dutch asked, and all three of the boys looked at him with glowing eyes. Arthur scoffed at them, scrubbing at his cheek with a thumb, leaving dust on the pad.

   
"Not like this I ain't," he replied, waving to the bartender. There was a sign set up on the bar, listing baths and housing as services. He had overheard the conversation, of course, a sturdy-built man who looked more like a bear than a bartender, and he set down a glass he was drying as soon as Arthur made eye contact.   
  
"Bath?" he asked gruffly, and Arthur gave him a staunch head nod in reply, passing fifty cents over the bar. The man snatched the coins up, holding them up to the light to make sure they were real. Arthur watched him inspect his money with pursed lips. He was a thief, not a damn counterfeiter. The man was not satisfied until he bit a coin, at which point, he tucked them in his pocket and waved to the staircase.   
  
"Last room on your right. Should be a hot one ready for you."  
  
"Go get 'em, Tiger!" Hosea called as he walked away towards the staircase and marched up like a celebrity, trying to ignore the boys as they whistled and howled at him. After all, this was their last chance to get the profanity out of their systems before Grimshaw and Bessie were back to beat the rude language out of them.  
  
"Scrub everywhere. _Everywhere,_ Arthur!" called John.   
  
"Just don't get too excited!" Hosea tried to add, but broke off in a cackle.   
  
"And clean up your mess, you damn ingrate!" Dutch this time.   
  
"Keep your hands to yourself in there." Hosea again.   
  
"You break it, you buy it," Dutch said, earning himself a chorus of laughter. Not just from the boys, either. The other patrons of the saloon were joining in.   
  
About halfway up the stairs, he lost his will to listen to them.  
He picked up the pace to shut the door behind him and hide the red in his cheeks, but by the hysterical laughter from the floor below, he figured they probably saw it. As soon as the door was slammed behind him, he leaned against it and dragged his hands over his face, trying to will the heat out.   
"Bunch of fools," he grumbled, smiling despite himself.   
  
  
  
  
He came out of the bathroom stinking of herbs he did not know the name of, his hair slicked back with pomade and his hat thoroughly dusted off. By their standards, he looked like a king walking back down to the table, and at the sight of him, Hosea let out a low whistle. The strangers seemed content enough to put the anti on hold for a moment, if only to listen to these hooligans gossip.  
  
"See now, that is how you look when you propose to a lady," Hosea declared, crossing his arms. John scoffed at him, but raised his glass of water to toast the statement, and Dutch actually rose up out of his seat to pat Arthur on the back. For a moment, all they did was look at each other knowingly.   
  
"I'm proud of you, Arthur," he said finally, and shook his hand. "Go out there and get yourself a wife." Arthur felt himself puff up involuntarily. He couldn't help but feel a little giddy, knowing he had Dutch's blessing on this one. With the proud gaze of two men he loved like fathers at his back, he tipped his hat to hide the warm smile, and marched out of the saloon, into the sunshine that awaited him.   
  
Boethiah wasn't happy to see him. She flicked her ears back irritably as he unhitched her, but she'd rested enough to calm down, finally. Her head had stopped tossing and her feet stopped shuffling, and when he brushed her off, she shone like gold in the mid-afternoon sunshine. Arthur lifted himself onto the saddle with a grunt and straightened his collar before he even thought about leaving, him and his horse both shined and polished- at least as much as either of them could be. Once he was mounted, he took a long, long moment to collect himself.   
  
He was going to go offer his hand in marriage to a woman. A woman that he'd already slept with. The mother of his damn child, who would probably be elated at the proposition. All of the signs said he should spur on down there before the poor girl came to her senses, and yet, he could not feel entirely confident about her answer. What did Eliza want with a big dumb rambler like him as a husband, anyway? Maybe he shouldn't assume she was okay settling for someone like him, but maybe he was reading the signs correctly. Maybe Eliza felt something like he did, and she would give him one of those real pretty smiles and lean down to give him a kiss on the cheek, and they would make this work. He must have lost track of time sitting there debating with himself, because behind him, a window slid open, and there was a chorus of voices shouting out of the saloon.   
  
"Dammit boy, get outta here!" Dutch called.   
  
"You gonna leave that girl waiting on you?" asked someone he didn't know, the dealer at the table who had apparently dropped the game just to join in.  
  
"Givin' her too much time to think about it!" Another stranger.   
  
Only Dutch could bring people together like that just to embarrass Arthur. Ears blazing, he gave them an irritable wave.   
  
"Alright!" he said, spurring Boethiah into a leisurely trot. "I'm goin'."   
  
Eliza's lay just beyond the edge of town, past the fur trader's and the gunsmith, down the road towards the river. The buildings passed by, tall and sturdy-looking, the signs painted with vibrant blues and greens, red twinberries growing up the posts and sometimes onto the awnings. His heart was practically leaping out of his chest knowing every step brought him closer to a very simple, very frightening reality.   
  
Eliza was so real, it hurt.   
  
The trees became darker as he trotted down the hill, Eliza's cabin coming visible through the fir trees and wild indigo, the sound of the trickling water harmonizing with birdsong. He may never settle down in one place, but among all the places he considered home, this may be his favorite. Isaac was not out and about, or he would have called out by now. Arthur swore that kid could smell him, or else Boethiah just stuck out of the landscape like a sore thumb, because sometimes, he would call out before Arthur could even see the cabin. The firs thinned out, revealing the fence, halfway rotted into the grass.   
  
Nobody was about, but there were two posts sticking out of the grass in the lawn. They were tied into crosses, with two names scratched into the top.   
  
Arthur had shot birds before, seen them fall singing out of the sky, but he had never thought of what that would feel like. Certainly this was it, he thought. He didn't need to pull Boethiah to a stop- she knew where they were, even if Arthur couldn't quite tell. Eliza's cabin had a rough little bastard boy playing out in the yard while his momma stitched on the porch, or went to work putting scorch marks on the kitchen wall. This place, whatever the hell it was, was empty, and quiet. He was close enough now to read the names on the crosses though he didn't have to.   
He laid a trembling hand on the gate to push it open, completely unnecessary since there were gaps in the fence by the road where he could just walk straight in, but he took the proper way anyway, and stepped into the knee-high grass to make it to the graves.   
  
That was what did it, referring to them as graves. He could not find it in him to kneel gracefully, so he dropped into the dirt with a huff of disbelief, and ran his meek hand over the wood where the names were carved.   
They were dead, and his eyes were bleeding fire, and his heart strained to keep beating in his chest while theirs were not. He would never again find Isaac in the yard, and the ring in his pocket would stay there, because his Eliza and his little bitty boy Isaac were cold in the ground.   
  
It had only been three weeks since he left. One since he'd gotten a letter from her. His fingers dug into the wood as he tried to fathom exactly what had happened. He had often spent months apart from the two of them without incident, and somehow, they had died in a little under two weeks.   
  
His chest already ached so hard that he didn't realize he wasn't breathing until he involuntarily gasped for air, one hand over his heart while the other hovered over the corner of the wooden cross labeled Isaac. He should move to wipe the tears from his face, the pitiful man, but he could not find it in him to care one lick about his image, nor the salty taste on his lips, as he bowed his head, and hissed out from between clenched teeth.   
  
"Why?" he wondered aloud, whispering as if someone would lean in and whisper back.   
  
  
Time did not seem especially relevant to him, as he lay shriveling in the grass, not sure if he wanted to hug himself or raise his hands to the sky and pray to something he did not believe in. People rode by every once in a while, but none of them said anything, and he did not look over his shoulder to see if they were staring. Eventually, he did lift his gaze from the ground and looked to the sky to see it turning bloody with dusk as the sun fell behind the mountains. He could not stay here. There wasn't a reason to, there was nobody here, but there was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that maybe if he stuck around, something would happen. He would come back to reality out of this vivid nightmare, or Eliza and Isaac would pop out of the house and laugh and laugh about their especially cruel joke. He could not quite bring himself to leave, knowing that he would have to try to tell Dutch and Hosea what had happened, without bursting out into tears like a child. He knew that if he could not make it through the thought without weeping, he would not even be able to start his sentence out loud.   
  
He may have stayed there forever, had he not heard the sound of hooves skidding on dirt behind him, and he looked up to see a familiar face atop a scrawny grey nag. James Astor looked back at him with big, buggy eyes, his long spindly mustache quirking in a frown from under a hat that was far too big for his pinhead. He'd told Isaac that clovers were lucky, but Arthur didn't feel awfully lucky right now. Or maybe it was supposed to be his luck that he lived.   
He wondered if he should have left the charm in Isaac's care after all, and felt another tear roll down his cheek.   
  
"What're you lookin' at?" Arthur cried hoarsely, sick of that damn sorry look he was giving him.   
  
"You was that boys father, huh?" James said, voice devoid of any sorrow. If Arthur weren't looking right at him, he'd say by his voice he was smiling, and James Astor became the record holder for the fastest Arthur had ever hated one person. He didn't reply to that, just buried his face in his arm, wishing the old man away.   
  
"Yeah! I've seen you round here." He had a nasally, croaky voice that made a good argument for punching him in the throat. He was dismounting his horse now, Arthur could tell by the footsteps, and he let out a low wail of despair as he realized the man wasn't going to stop talking to him, and at some point, he may be obligated to answer. Whether or not that answer would be a bullet remained to be seen, he supposed. "Baaaaad business, I tell you what."  
  
A thought occurred to Arthur, and he lifted his head to look at the spindly tree frog of a man.   
  
"Do you know how they died?" Arthur asked quietly.   
  
"WHAT?" James Astor yelled back, despite being no more than a foot away from him. Arthur recoiled, blood boiling, but he still wanted the answer.   
  
" _How did they die?"_  he bellowed from his spot on the ground.   
  
"Somebody robbed 'em," Astor replied matter-of-factly, as if Arthur wasn't one stupid comment away from knocking his teeth in. "Dunno why they had to shoot 'em, though. Dumb bastard only got ten damn dollars out of it."  
  
Arthur was off the ground now, knuckles clenched white by his side as his voice lowered again, forgetting who he was speaking to.   
  
"Who?" he seethed.  
  
"WHAT?"   
  
" _WHO?"_    
  
"Who?" James seemed to have forgotten what he was talking about, because he obviously heard him well enough to lower his voice again. Arthur lost his patience, snatching Mister Astor by the collar of his dirty, patchy undershirt.   
  
" _Who,"_ Arthur hissed. "Who killed Eliza, old man? Who killed my boy?" He snarled it directly into the man's ear so that there was no question of whether or not he heard him, shaking him back and forth by his grip on his shirt. James put his hands in the air in surrender, though he seemed more sorry than frightened.   
  
"Dunno," he replied, swatting Arthur's hands off of him. "Sheriff ain't got no suspects."   
  
Somebody shot them. Some sick dog of a man had walked into their home with a gun, seen a single mother and her little tot son, and found it in their icy void of a heart to pull the trigger. To send a nice girl and a goddamn child to go see god, as if they weren't anything but marks. His blood boiled in his veins, and for a moment, his grip tightened around the old man's shirt, knuckles whitening. He should have been there. He should have been there to protect them, and if not that, than at least to unload a couple of clips into the sick fucker's skull and send him back to hell. There had to be some kind of hint, some clue.   
  
"You can't tell me that not one person in this whole damn town knows anything? Not one goddamn thing? Didn't hear the gunshots?! _Didn't fuckin' see anyone walkin' away covered in my son's blood?! Not one single fuckin' person!"_  
James shook his head silently, eyes bugging out, and Arthur pushed him away roughly with a puff of disbelief.   
  
And then he let out a woeful wail and fell backwards, letting his weight fall onto the rotten fence behind him. He hadn't planned to bury his face in his hands, but he palmed his eyes and found that he preferred not to have to look at any of this sorry shit around him, himself included, so he kept his head there and moaned again. His eyes burned from tears, and he wondered if it was worth crying more. He sure felt like it was, standing in front of his son and sweethearts' graves, talking to a mindless old coot. His wail dissolved into quiet, short breaths as he tried to regain some sense of where he was, and if any of this was real, until something cold touched his elbow. He shied away from it with an irritable sniff, pulling his hands away to see James holding a half bottle of bourbon at him. He took it cautiously, as if he wasn't sure what he wanted him to do with it. Of course, he knew exactly what it was for, and though the thought of drinking his eyesight away over Eliza and Isaac's graves made him nauseous, he knew it would feel much better than pacing their yard like a lost puppy and waiting for the pain to ebb on its own.   
  
So he held it close to him with both hands and looked to the ground, not sure if it warranted a thank you, but luckily, James did not wait for one.   
  
"Awful young," the old man pondered as he tipped his hat, and jumped back into saddle. "Awful young."  
  
Was he talking about Isaac, Eliza, or Arthur? All three felt justified.   
  
  
Arthur unscrewed the bottle cap slowly like he was holding a bottle of arsenic, eyeballing the contents with rosy, burning eyes. He looked over his shoulder once to see the crosses, and that convinced him to tip it back in one long, painful swig.   
  
It didn't take him long to inebriate himself. He was a lightweight, and a sucker, but a champion drinker. His tongue didn't shy away at the burn of bourbon, and for a couple of agonizing minutes, all he did was sit against the fence and drink and wait for himself to forget why he was crying. He didn't want to leave, but he supposed he should at least try.   
  
Drinking turned out to be the easy part. Getting up the hill was much more difficult. He couldn't even fathom trying to saddle Boethiah, and she grew ornery when he tried, and failed, and then tried again and failed again. She got sick of him and started trotting away, making it impossibly more difficult for him, and eventually, he had to return to his post in the yard, lying on his back and watching the stars spin. Drink did very little to help his mood overall, he thought dumbly, rolling an almost-empty bottle in his hands. He looked at the post and wailed, his face wet with either tears or dew. Didn't matter to him which it was.   
  
" _Liiiiiza,"_ he moaned pitifully, and took another swig. Half of it trickled down his cheeks, and being that he was laying down, he almost choked on it. He covered his mouth and let out a sob somewhere through the choking. "Isaac, my boy, my poor boy, you was such a good kid. Dammit.  _Dammit!_ God fucking..."  
  
He wasn't lucky. He was quite possibly the unluckiest man alive, he thought. Isaac should have kept that damn clover, he thought. But that wouldn't have done anything, because luck wasn't real. All there was was folk, and folk's hearts. Their damn, ugly, cruel hearts.   
  
Somebody looked at little Isaac, probably crying his little eyes out, and somewhere in their cold heart decided to shoot him and his momma dead for ten measly dollars.   
  
_Folk ain't kind, Arthur._ He should have remembered that.   
  
If Arthur had gotten his wits about him, hiked up his trousers, and settled down, they would still be alive. If he hadn't gone on that revenge mission with Dutch, and stayed behind just this once like he wanted, he would have had the bastard dead before he stepped foot on the porchstep, and Eliza would say something like "Good Lord, how dreadful," and they would sit down for dinner and fret about it together. Isaac would have grown up tall. Taller than Arthur, probably, and Arthur would have to look up to tell him to quit worrying his ma with his teenage escapades.   
  
And none of that would ever happen, because Arthur was a cowardly idiot. He wasn't there for them, and now they were lying in the ground beneath him.   
  
His breath was hitching in his throat again, and he rolled over on his side so he wouldn't literally choke on his tears. Just as he lay his cheek in the grass, he wondered if it even mattered. Maybe he preferred to choke to death here. It may be preferable to the insufferable pain that was burning out of his chest into every living inch of his body and leaking out his eyes. He sputtered out another sob, and curled up on himself like a dying varmint.   
That's what he was, at the end of the day.   
  
"Arthur!"  
  
A lady's voice rang out from somewhere nearby, and Arthur jerked his head out of the dirt to look around, too drunk to tell if he recognized it or not. Apparently, the answer was yes. Bessie was rushing through the gate, pulling her skirt above her ankles to protect them from the grass. Arthur wasn't sure why she bothered, since as soon as she was by his side, she fell to her knees, probably staining the hell out of the fabric. He moved a hand to wipe the tears off his face, but only managed to cover both his palms before he realized that there was just too much water to reasonably dry off with his hands alone. Bessie reached towards him with a handkerchief, but he waved her away with a fitful grunt. With a great deal more groaning, and her support as she pulled him by the arm, he eventually managed to sit up, resting his arms on his knees and letting his head fall between them.   
  
Bessie looked to the graves, and then to him, and rested a hand on his back, rubbing circles between his shoulders, and just like that, he was crying again, though it was a little more dignified without all that wailing and sobbing for breath.   
  
"Good lord, you poor child," Bessie sighed, looking back to the crosses behind them. "You poor boy. What the hell happened?"  
  
"They been shot," he slurred from between his knees. "Some sick bastard came an' shot em while I w's away. Damn 'em. Damn me, damn Dutch. Damn erryone. Buncha cocksuckers..."  
  
"Arthur," she said quietly, in that soft voice of hers. She gave a nice, long moment of silence for the reality to sink in, leaving her hand on Arthur's back comfortingly, before speaking up. "Come on now... It ain't no fault of yours or Dutch's... Let's get you back, fore you drink yourself to death out here."

Arthur hummed in disagreement, burying his face further into the cloth of his dirt-caked trousers.   
  
"Arthur," she huffed, and Arthur looked up from the tomb he'd made himself. Bessie put on a pout as soon as she saw his face, but started standing up nonetheless. He looked at the crosses, and then at the house, and then up to Miss Bessie, who was holding her hand out to drag him away from this place that seemed so silent that even the night song of frogs and little black crickets couldn't pierce through. He still wasn't certain he'd be able to tell Dutch, but after a couple hours of mourning alone like a dignified man does, Bessie's presence had reminded him that he was not in fact, a dignified man. He was a big blubbering child disguised in facial hair, and he wanted more god damn alcohol. So he accepted the help of a lady in getting his ass out of the dirt, doing his best not to lean on her as she guided him towards the gate. Unfortunately, his head got sick of spinning real quickly, and he had to push her away so he could lean on the fence while he emptied his stomach.   
He stayed there a moment, wondering if his dignity would come back as quick as his nausea vanished. Not the case apparently. Ten seconds of refusing to make eye contact did not make him feel any less ashamed or hurt, so he made the rest of the trip himself. Boethiah had wandered away quite a bit since he left her, and was chewing on some reeds by the river when he called her.  
"Boe!"  
Her ears flicked backwards, so he knew she heard him, but otherwise, she made no move to come to him, so he called louder.   
  
" _C'moon_ , Boe, you piece a' shit," At that, she raised her head, but still did not come to him. Bessie tightened her grip on his shoulder, and he winced. Not because it hurt, but because he knew that if it weren't for the circumstances, she would swat him in the back of the head for his language.   
  
"Poor fool," she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes as if trying to talk herself out of leaving Arthur where he was. "C'mere, girl!"   
  
She held out her hand, pretending to have a treat, and Boethiah's ears suddenly stood at attention. She bowed her head, nostrils flaring as she wandered over.   
  
"Damn nag," Arthur grumbled, stumbling, his voice crackling in his throat. "Can't be bothurred to help yer old friend in mournin', but somebuddy's gawt a sugar cube, oh heav'n 'bove, iss an emergency."  
  
Bessie scoffed at him as Boethiah shoved her nose into her hand, only to toss her head fitfully that there was nothing waiting there for her. She would have turned right back around to go back to grazing had Bessie not taken a hold of her lead, and waved at Arthur to mount up. He grabbed a hold of the saddle and with a long groan, managed to struggle up and flop onto his saddle. Unfortunately, no amount of writhing could get him past that point, and he let out a helpless sigh when he realized he was stuck, his bottle slipping out of his hands. Bessie watched it clink to the ground with furrowed eyebrows and a concerned look.   
  
"Was that full?" she asked, eyes growing a bit wide with panic, and Arthur scoffed indignantly.   
  
"Half full," he defended, voice still hoarse. Whether that was from drink or from weeping he wasn't sure. More likely a combination of both. "Or half empty. D'pends on how you look attit, I guess."   
  
Bessie didn't find it funny, and neither did Arthur. Neither of them laughed, and he felt kind of dumb for saying it in the first place. Bessie sighed loudly, and grabbed Boethiah's lead. Her own horse, a big bay pangare draft horse named Penny, was waiting nearby, nodding her head dramatically, and at the first sign that they were leaving, led the way up the hill.   
  
"You just gon' leave me like this, then?" Arthur asked, even though he knew better than to expect an answer. 

 

The ride to the saloon was easily the longest he'd taken in his life. The spins and nausea brought on by having a saddle stabbing him in the gut combined with the persistent ache in his chest and fire in his blood made him pretty sure he was dying. Thank God for that small consolation. He didn't want to live another thirty odd godforsaken years on this foul earth. They pulled up and he slid off Boethiah's back, taking no less than ten steps backwards trying to contemplate what was up and what was down, and though his vision did eventually steady, he still wasn't sure he knew. He figured he looked a miserable sight, almost as bad he smelled, standing outside the saloon with his arms hanging limp, trousers covered in dirt, his hair mussed up from having his head stuffed in his arms. His eyes felt bloodshot, like he had about cried all the tears he had to wet them with, and his head lulled to one side or another like it couldn't make a decision which shoulder it wanted to rest on. He moved a hand to see if he couldn't wipe the bile off his chin, only to realize that was only gonna make his sleeves smell instead of his face. Luckily, Bessie was dismounted too, and offered him a black handkerchief that smelled like honeysuckle, and he made certain that although he could not find the words now, some other time, he would thank her profusely.   
  
She had her hand on his back again, coaxing him up the steps, since he couldn't find it within him to bother moving. There was music in the saloon, but it was late enough that anyone not drinking themselves senseless had long gone home or otherwise passed out in the mud nearby. Dutch was waiting with John at the bar with one of the other fellers that had hollered out the window at him earlier in the day, urging him to go down to that house and ask his lady to marry him.   
  
It wasn't fair to him that Arthur hated him so much. John had his head on the bar half-asleep while Dutch held a deck of cards, apparently engaged in a game of war. It wasn't especially entertaining, since it was all left to chance, but he supposed it was one way to pass the time. Bessie didn't say anything to either of them, just escorted Arthur towards the bar, eyes lulling as he tried to convince himself not to pass out. Not that being awake was worth the fight, but he had made enough of an ass of himself in front of Bessie, and hoped he could avoid doing the same next to Dutch and, god forbid, John.   
  
Dutch looked up as they approached with a big, sunshiney grin.   
  
"Arthur!" he called, and as soon as he saw him, that grin vanished and his voice turned into something like hurt. "She said no."   
  
It wasn't a question, but it should have been. It would have been a much better day if he had gone down to Eliza's house and all she did was reject him. No, today, she had done something much worse. Arthur felt his heart crumple again, and he tried to find the words to explain himself, drunk and agonized as he was, as Bessie dumped him in the last available chair.   
  
"They's dead, Dutch," he said quietly, and whatever silence there was to honor Arthur's feelings for being "rejected", it became impossibly quieter.   
  
"My boy, what?" Dutch said, and John's head lifted off the bar, looking at Arthur with big, disbelieving eyes.   
  
Arthur was sure he'd cried all he could, but as he lay his head on the table top, another tear or two dripped off his nose, though he was long past moaning.   
  
"Somebody shot 'em while we was gone."   
  
"Who?" Dutch demanded immediately, bringing his fist down on the wood. It clattered crankily, and the last man at the bar did the honors of speaking up.   
  
"I... I didn't know it was her, son," he said, lifting his hat off of his head to hold it in front of his heart. "Nobody knows who robbed 'em. Sheriff's been tearin' his hair out over it... I woulda warned you if... If I'd known."   
  
Dutch looked to the stranger, and then back to Bessie, who had her cheek resting in the palm of her hand. She gave a dreary little nod at the silent question, and Dutch removed his hat as well, John taking an example and doing the same.   
  
"Oh, Arthur."  
  
Arthur wasn't listening. He had a couple of bills out of his pocket, waving them at the bartender, his head flopped onto the bar drunkenly. The man was halfway through uncapping some whiskey when Bessie snatched the money right out of Arthur's hand and snapped her fingers at the tender.  
  
"Don't you give him that," she warned.   
  
The big bartender paused what he was doing, looking from Bessie and back to Arthur, who moaned real quiet and pitiful like.   
  
"C'mon, pardner, please," Arthur begged, but there was no winning against the fire in Bessie's eyes when she was against something, so he was left to whimper as the man put the bottle back down, shaking his head in silent apology.   
  
  
  
Arthur may have been condemned to sleep at the inn nearby had he not begged to go back to camp. He wasn't sobering up as much as he was adjusting to his drunkenness, and managed to ride back on his own, quietly pawing away help where it was offered.  
  
The new camp was settled in the hills outside of Aberdeen, upriver and west from town, nestled in a dark grove of firs downhill from the road. Hosea was the only one still awake to listen to Bessie as she explained quietly, but Susan roused and crawled out of her tent as soon as she got a grasp on the severity of the situation.  
Arthur didn't stick around to help tell the story. The second Boethiah was hitched, he'd stumbled back to his bedroll, pulling the string to let the tent flap fall closed behind him as he collapsed into the cotton and curled up. He held the sheets in his fists, close to his heart in a pitiful attempt to hug himself, and stared straight ahead. No tears were left, and wailing with all his might had neither brought them back or alleviated the pain. So all he could do was stare.   
He stayed awake that night, looking at the stars through the oh-so narrow slit in the rain hood, listening to the silence that followed the story, pierced only by crickets and the gentle pluck of Bessie's banjo. Nobody dare pipe up to sing, but he knew the words.    
  
  
  
  
_Over yonder in the graveyard,  
Where the wild, wild flowers grow_  
_There they laid my own true lover_  
_She's gone from me, forevermore._

 _Fairer than the sweetest flowers,_  
_Restless as the wildest wind,_  
_Born with a love deep as the ocean,_  
_This was the the girl that I did win._

 _I left her there, back in the mountains_  
_To see the world's riches to gain_  
_When I returned, no earthly treasure_  
_Could ease this heart so full of pain._  
  
_There so high upon that mountain,_  
_beneath that little mound of clay_  
_The girl that I'd returned to marry,_  
_Still among the flowers did lay._  
  
_I'll go away, and I will wander_  
_Lay aside my earthly gains._  
_And I'll not end as a man with riches,_  
_Undone in sorrow I'll remain._  
  
_Undone in sorrow, I'll remain.  
  
  
[Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/5hatA9IrgZRnr7W2mCxyI0) / [YT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrklhjt4pv8)   
_


	4. Rat in Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been one week since we left Aberdeen. I can not wrap my head around the idea that both Eliza and my beloved boy Isaac are in the ground, even after a night of drinkin' myself senseless. I have many regrets, not the least of which came from the two-day illness I brought upon myself. Though I did not want to leave, I knew there was no point in staying anymore, so I let Dutch drag my limp corpse out south with the rest of them. He says we're going to some unsettled place West of New Austin to investigate more into that lead that Bessie and Grimshaw found in Paradise. Supposed to be a real big silver deal going on down in Garrison that he wants to stick his fingers into. 
> 
> Folks are real weary of talking to me, which is alright. I have not been much for conversation. I hope some time in the desert will put my aching mind at ease.

After poisoning himself in Aberdeen, Arthur had taken a two day break on the drinking, but besides that, he had indulged it every night. Grimshaw had done her best to hide the alcohol from him, but he was a grown man, and on the rare occasion that he could not find it, they were never too far from town that he wasn't willing to ride out and go get more himself. Life more or less kept going for everyone else in camp. There had been a solid day and a half when they could not find it in them to be merry, but it was not their family that was dead, and they only had so much room in their hearts to spare for acquaintances. The only one besides Arthur who seemed especially affected by it was Dutch. He put on a decent show for the others, pretending it didn't bother him, but Arthur noticed how quick he was to die back down after the end of a conversation. The haunted look he had in his eye when he didn't think Arthur saw him staring at him from way across camp.   
  
Arthur was standing around the edge of camp, having just marked in his journal that seven days had passed since Aberdeen. They had been set up here in the desert for two of those. He might be tempted to draw some of the scenery sometime, but in his humble opinion, it looked just like every other inch of desert. They could pick up camp and move it four miles in any direction and it would look all the same to him. On the bright side, he would never be in danger of losing camp, because the campfire would be visible in the nighttime for miles. On the downside, he wasn't the only person in the desert with eyeballs, and after poking his nose curiously into hundreds of other strangers' camps, he knew better than to expect no trouble from it. He had a sparkling new bottle of rum in one hand while his other ran absent-mindedly over Boethiah's neck. He hadn't dived straight into drunkenness like he did most nights, because it was getting to the point where drink was no longer his cure-all. It may numb the anger and the violent kind of hurt in him, but that just meant he was left with the ache. The godforsaken ache that made it hard to convince himself to do anything.   
  
Even sleep had become damn near impossible. He'd managed it once or twice, but last night it just wasn't happening. He had stayed awake all through the morning and then through the day, into the evening where he was now. His head wasn't acting straight, like it was rotting away trying to find a way to cure the hurt, and ignoring just about everything else, including sleep, food, and water. He was so hellbent on thinking about the hurt that his mind didn't want to hear anything about basic survival, and while drink didn't make him crave any one of those, it did make him forget what he was thinking about instead.   
  
Dutch cleared his throat behind him, and Arthur looked over his shoulder slowly. He wasn't expecting it, and he hadn't heard him approach, but in his fog, apparently, he had also forgotten about fear, so he didn't startle like he should. Without warning, Dutch snatched the bottle out of his hand. He didn't really want it that bad that he was willing to argue, but to his surprise, Dutch didn't throw it or bring it back to camp to be hidden. Instead, he took a swig himself, and then set it on the ground and laid a hand on Arthur's shoulder.   
  
"Let's take a walk," Dutch said, and although Arthur certainly didn't feel like walking, he allowed himself to be herded out into the temperate desert night. The sky was so open out here, it was hard to feel like you were even on earth. No towns for miles around made for a starscape unrivaled, not by the prairie, or the mountains, or the rolling farm hills in the east. Dutch always said the desert made him feel closer to God, and as of recently, Arthur was obliged to agree, though in his eyes, they were already pretty close. Arthur'd held more one-way conversations with him this week alone than most religious men had in their lives.   
  
For a long time, Dutch held true to his word, and all they did was walk, following no specific path. They didn't have to. The ground was so flat you barely even had to look where you were going. It wasn't until Dutch stopped him that Arthur pulled his gaze away from the sky to look at the ground. They were standing in front of a cactus, bigger and taller than Arthur had ever seen. Had Dutch not grabbed him by the shoulder, he would have wandered straight into it, and spent his night plucking spines out of his britches.   
  
Dutch was holding two cigars in his hand, and Arthur took one with a sniff, not sure how he felt about a tobacco high right about now. Regardless, he accepted the offering, and held his out to Dutch's match, and they stood around puffing for a couple minutes before Arthur's curiosity got the best of him. Dutch wasn't the type to pull you away if he didn't have anything to say, and he certainly wasn't the type to run out of words.   
  
"What'd you drag me out here for?" Arthur asked, eyeing him warily.

Dutch gave a soft sigh and tapped the ash off the end of his cigar, shaking his head.   
  
"You haven't slept much."   
  
It wasn't an especially keen observation, but he supposed sleep deprivation wasn't all that hard to see. It was one of those things that was real quick to show in the face. Hell, his undereye felt tender when he blinked, he could only imagine what he looked like.   
  
"You ain't eaten, either."   
  
That was less obvious, and not an entirely fair statement. Arthur'd had three meals that week, which meant that unless Dutch was a psychic now, he'd been keeping a very close eye on him. Arthur pursed his lips, but he didn't look up, nor did he say anything in response.   
  
"Hosea thinks I oughta talk to you about Eliza and Isaac. Being that I lost Annabelle, and oughta know what its like."   
  
Arthur lowered his head with a silent nod. He didn't expect to enjoy the conversation, but Dutch was just trying to help. The least he could do was sit through the talk, since that's about all what he planned on doing at camp anyway.   
  
"But I knew who killed her. I have the opportunity to kill him myself someday. Keeps me going on the worst days." Arthur looked up at Dutch to see him staring up into the darkness, dark eyes lit by stars. "I ain't never lost a son before. And being that you don't have any chance at closure or revenge... Arthur, I know better. There's nothing that I can say that can ease that hurt you're feeling."   
  
  
Arthur followed his gaze so that he was looking at the sky too, and in his agreement, let out a sigh. Finally, he spoke again, eyes never once leaving that big black void above him.   
  
"All that stuff you taught me. 'Bout honor. Kindness, compassion." He tapped the embers off his cigar without looking, and lifted it to take a long drawl so he could talk through the smoke. "I forgot there was fellers out there that could shoot a kid and his momma in cold blood." Arthur lifted a hand to rub his eyes tiredly, shaking his head. He was so sick of hurt, sick of people, sick of knowing it could have been any one of them that pulled the trigger. "Dutch, what am I gonna do?"  
  
"There wasn't nothing you could have done, Arthur," Dutch reminded him. "See them stars?"  
  
Arthur nodded absently. He hadn't had the energy to look away from them.   
  
"You're looking up, and they're looking down. What you show 'em's up to you."   
  
On that note, Dutch laid his hand on his back and pulled him in for a hug that lasted a couple of seconds, and then he broke away, gave him a nod, and left to head back to camp. It glowed meekly among the sparse shrubs off in the distance, a little orange beacon in the sea of dust. And for a long time, Arthur stared at the stars, eventually laying down so he didn't have to crane his head. That's all he did was look up, feel small, and he didn't think about anything in the world except him and God and the endless sky. 

 

 

 

 

   
The next morning came before he was ready for it, sunlight eventually coming to bleach out the stars above. He had come very near to sleep, having returned to camp to lay in his bed with his eyes closed, his mind fogging over for a few hours until the others began to rouse. At the sound of the coffee kettle squealing, he crawled out of his tent. Whatever he was expecting from Susan, it wasn't the suspicious look she gave him. He returned the look with a weak smile, and reached for the coffee kettle, only to have his hand swatted away quick as lightning. He pulled back and rubbed it as if the slap had actually hurt, blinking at Susan with weary eyes.   
"Did you sleep?" Grimshaw asked. Her eyes narrowed from beneath her honeycomb of golden brown hair.   
  
"Yeah," he said. It was only half of a lie, really. He had rested his eyes.   
  
"Mister Morgan, do not lie to me," she snapped, and he put his hands up in surrender.   
  
"I ain't!" he insisted. Susan leered at him, holding the kettle hostage in her lap, until Arthur was sure he had not convinced her. He let out a long sigh and palmed his eyes, his head falling just as Bessie came shuffling sleepily out of her tent. She gave him a knowing look, her sympathy hidden for him behind a half-amused smile.   
  
"You have to sleep, Arthur," she pointed out, taking her seat beside Susan on a crate.   
  
"I'm tryin'," he insisted, only to realize she'd just made him confess aloud. "Dammit." With an exhausted grunt, he picked his hat up off his head and threw it down in defeat. Grimshaw looked at him with her arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked, apparently unimpressed.   
  
"Now you're throwin' a temper tantrum, Mister Morgan." They sat leering at one another over the fire for a couple of seconds before Susan finally relented, and passed him the kettle. "Fine, but just two cups, and none in the afternoon. I want to see you get a good nights sleep tonight."   
  
He accepted his conditions, and in holding out his cup, signed his name on the line. But as it poured into his cup and filled his hands with warmth, and the smell of fresh brewed coffee filled his nose, his mouth watered, and he realized Grimshaw could have asked him to sign over his soul and he probably would have obliged.   
  
  
  
About halfway through his second cup, John roused from his tent, nose stuck in a piece of parchment. He didn't acknowledge anyone when he came out, but took a seat on a blanket laid out by the fire, his eyes scanning oh-so-slowly over the page.   
  
"Whatcha got there?" Arthur asked, interest piqued.   
  
"Bounty poster," John replied. "Hey what's that say?"   
  
He held it up for Arthur to see, and he cringed at the picture that was sketched out before him. A man no older than thirty who still somehow managed to look gaunt. If he was being honest, it looked like Dutch if he was blonde and dying of dysentery. The thought left a little bit of amusement in its wake as it passed through, and Arthur considered showing him, but it wasn't nearly funny enough to warrant all that, so he kept it to himself.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
His eyes moved further down the page where John's finger was pointing, and he cringed.   
  
"Unethical animal husbandry."  
  
"Husbandry," John repeated, skimming the word once or twice over.   
  
"You a bounty hunter now? Lil' old John Marston?" John squinted at him disagreeably, and read the name aloud.   
  
"Alan Scott. Wanted alive for questioning. Unethical animal husbandry, disorderly conduct, and sexual vagrancy. What's all that mean?"   
  
"Means he tortures animals, makes an ass of himself, and doesn't know what no means." Arthur counted the list down on his fingers, his expression growing more sour with each one he explained. "He don't sound so tough that you and me couldn't take him."  
  
John looked up with a determined smirk and a sparkle in his eye, then folded up the paper and tucked it in his pocket. 

"You comin' with me then?" he asked hopefully. Arthur nodded his head. A little bit of justice might do something to ease his hatred for mankind, or at least put his mind at rest for a while, and by the way John had perked up, he wouldn't be able to say no anyway.   
  
"Let's go catch ourselves a vagrant."   
  
Bessie stood up, adjusting her bootstraps and tying her dress tight behind her.   
  
"And where you think you're going?" Arthur asked, having stood up from his crate and pulled his revolver out to check it for rust.   
  
"To keep an eye on you two."   
  
"We'll be fine," John argued.   
  
"Alright, then, because I want to. How's that for a reason?" She replied sarcastically. Arthur shook his head and adjusted his hat as he stepped up to Boethiah, unhitching her from the nearby post. He would argue, but Bessie could handle herself in a gunfight as well as any of them, and it wouldn't hurt to have an extra gun by their side. After all, they had no way of knowing how many folks this feller was holed up with.   
  
He saddled up quickly, and sat up on Boethiah's back, letting her tamp her feet impatiently as John and Bessie bickered away. By all means, Bessie could just tell him to shut up and deal with it, and being his senior, he couldn't do a damn thing about it, but from Arthur's view, she looked like she was having fun annoying him.   
  
"He's a real mean feller. It ain't no place for a lady!"  
  
"We'll see if it matters when I put a bullet between his eyes," she replied, the tone in her voice saying she was egging him on more than actually arguing.   
  
"And he's wanted alive!"   
  
"Hell, could just castrate him. That might take him down a peg."   
  
John scoffed. Apparently, his sensibilities were offended by the suggestion, but it got him to shut his mouth and mount up to take the lead. Arthur took the rear and they marched along through the desert single file, caravan style, none of the horses too please with the heat. Boethiah had her head hung, her normal anxious prance tones down to a disdainful trudge, and she was better off than either of the other two with her short coat and small build.   
  
"Guess he's hiding in that old copper mine a little ways east, towards the hills," John said over his shoulder, spurring Big Boy to pick up the pace. He didn't like it, but he was a patient horse, and moved into a leisurely canter.  
  
Neither Arthur nor Bessie asked, but it was good information to have anyway.   
  
"Best not go charging in, guns blazin' then," Bessie cautioned.   
  
"Thought you weren't afraid of this feller? If he's in the mine, he won't have no escape," John teased, spurring his way across the desert. The hills rose up a few miles off, and this far south, there weren't any foothills. It was desert right up until the edge of the mountain, where the rocky slopes shot straight into the skies. They weren't there yet, but the mountains were seeming bigger and bigger the further they rode.   
  
"I ain't," she said tersely, and Arthur could see from his position in the rear a smirk growing on her face. "But I must admit, being crushed by a rock slide or losin' some limbs to dynamite might be enough to spook me."   
  
"You think he has the place rigged?" Arthur asked as the ground became rocky beneath them, and John cast a wary look over his shoulder, apparently not too excited by that idea.  
  
"Can't be ruled out," She replied. The ground sloped upwards as they ascended into the valley, the trail becoming winding as they went.   
  
After about five sharp turns, they were standing on the east side of the mountain, looking over a steep, dry valley. These parts of the mountains didn't see enough rain to support the kind of foliage of Aberdeen, and they were too cold and irregular to be carpeted in shrubs like the desert, but they still managed to be spackled in some spots with low-lying trees too stubborn to be killed by either cold or thirst. The copper mine was on a ledge up the road above them, seemingly unguarded, but there was a scrawny, beaten old nag standing outside, its head bowed and its legs quaking. At the sight of the, it let out a weary snort, and shuffled to the edge of the cliff.   
  
"So how we goin' about this?" Arthur asked, keeping his voice low as they dismounted.   


"Well," John pondered, gaze lingering on the entrance. "I figure somebody's gotta go in there and look for traps."   
  
The three of them stood in a circle, avoiding eye contact and shuffling their feet.   
  
"Draw straws?" Arthur suggested, and John let out a dramatic sigh.   
  
"Ugh. Fine, I'll go."   
  
"You'll do great, John," Bessie encouraged as he started up the road, staying low and quiet. He waved testily at her and rounded the bend to sneak up towards the mine's entrance. The scrawny horse out front let out a testy snort and pressed itself closer to the cliff, and Arthur felt sympathy pang in his chest for the poor critter. He didn't want to know what Mister Alan Scott had done to such a big creature to make it so jumpy.   
John vanished into the mine, and for a long time, all they could do was hold their breath and wait. There wasn't any sound from inside, which was either very good or very, very bad. After a long while, though, John did return, shuffling to the cliffside and waving them up to follow him.   
  
Arthur gave Bessie a swift nod and led the way up the road, around the bend so they were in front of the mine. John was waiting at the entrance, tucked around the corner. There was a dim firelight coming from one of the shaft tunnels, casting a blurry, but distinct shadow on the wall.   
  
"He's in there. Ain't nothin' rigged up, but he's sittin' on a lot of dynamite," John whispered, waving to the cavern where the light was coming from.   
  
"Good." 

Arthur looked over to see Bessie creeping around the corner ahead of them, apparently unfazed by the concept of dynamite, despite what she may have said.   
  
"You boys got a lasso? I don't reckon he'll put up a fight- a gunshot in there could kill all of us, but if he does, we don't need to test that."  
  
Arthur strapped his revolver back into its holster and unspooled the rope from his belt. It was already tied into a lasso at the end, but he pulled the loop out now so it would fit around what he understood to be a somewhat scrawny man. Not enough slack, and it wouldn't catch, or it'd catch around the throat. Too much, and he'd be able to wriggle free before Arthur got the chance to pull tight. His heart racing and a half-formed smile on his face, Arthur gave Bessie a nod, and followed her in.   
  
The man was hunched over the fire, drinking whiskey and reading a novel, his mustache quivering beneath a skinny, too-long nose. At the signal from John, a brief hand wave, he slowly rose out of the shadows, and adjusted his hold on the lasso. He was behind the man, so the firelight cast the shadow behind him. Mister Scott didn't even get a fair warning before Arthur flung the rope out, but he let out a wicked snarl as soon as the rope caught him. Luckily, Arthur was quick, and yanked the rope back to pull the loop tight. Scott fell backwards off the barrel he was sitting on, his novel on the ground and his whiskey spilled, his hands flopping about uselessly at his sides until Bessie and John popped out from hiding with their guns drawn. Then, he got real quick and let out a hiss like a snake.   
  
"C'mon, now, gentlemen. Lady." He rolled onto his back, only for Arthur to wrestle him back to his belly to hogtie him, bitching under his breath the entire time. Arthur pulled away just in time to avoid the bastard's teeth as he tried to snap at his ankle, the goddamn animal. He reeled back and gave him a kick in the side of the head for good measure, and Mister Scott slammed the toe of his boots into the ground fitfully.   
"Goddammit, I ain't hurt nobody!" he spat. "Not really. Two-hunned dolla bounty, that ain't fair! Nobody's dead. Nobody's out any money."  
  
"How 'bout them women?" Arthur challenged. The mine had a sour, acidic smell to it, but he wasn't sure that's what was making him feel sick. "All them animals? Hell, what'd you do to earn yourself a charge for unethical husbandry?"  
  
"None of your damn business!"  
  
Arthur heard a gun cock behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see Bessie leveling her shotgun to his face. He couldn't help but chuckle at the wide eyes Mister Scott gave as he realized he was trapped in a cave, surrounded by dynamite and three lunatics with guns.   
  
"I think the lady wants to know," Arthur said.   
  
"What a man does with his own chickens is his own damn business!" he sneered.   
  
"Chickens?!" Arthur cried, recoiling from the man like he was made of bile. "Jesus!"   
  
"Yeah well not everybody shits gold! Couldn't afford anythin' bigger."   
  
He looked behind him to see Bessie's face contorted in disgust, while John mostly looked like he was trying to figure out what this beast had done to those poor chickens. Arthur wasn't about to explain it.   
  
"Alright, well..." Arthur started, but Bessie waved him off.   
  
"Let me take him," she said. "Penny's the only horse big enough to carry the weight of this man's sins."   
  
Arthur put his hands in the air and turned his head away, figuring Boethiah would appreciate not having shit on her back, and Bessie let out a grunt as she lifted the writhing man onto her shoulder.   
  
"You're a strong one, ain't ya?" Alan taunted. Arthur wasn't sure the bastard knew who he was talking to, or he'd watch his tongue, but for the sake of entertainment, he decided not to warn him. Bessie kept a cool head as she always seemed to, strolling casually towards the cliffside, where the horses were waiting a little over seven feet below them.  "Fucked plenty a' girls, ain't none of 'em able to pick me up. You're lucky I'm tied down, or-"

His voice quickly spiked into a yowl as Bessie hurled him off the edge of the cliff, and then a moan. Arthur was sure he heard a bone crack, and winced, throwing his arms out incredulously.   
  
"Bessie," he called chidingly, and she cocked an eyebrow back at him. "He's wanted alive."   
  
"He is alive," she pointed out with a cheeky smirk, glancing down to the man as he wailed pitifully.   
  
"You broke my damn legs!" he cried distantly, his voice drowned by the concerned whinny of the horses.   
  
"You don't need 'em," Bessie teased, squatting on the end of the ledge like a cat looking for birds. "Legs is for runnin!"

 

Arthur shook his head and despite himself, let out a huff of amusement. John was already well behind him, making his way down the mine to look for something worth taking, and Arthur figured he should probably grab some dynamite for their trouble. He stamped out the tiny campfire and looked around. There were easily twenty crates he could choose from, but he supposed it didn't really matter. Dynamite was dynamite. He bent down to pick up a crate and was making his way outside when a wheezy call came from John down the other shaft.   
  
"Arthur, c'mere, quick!"  
  
At the urgency in his voice, Arthur didn't bother with caution as he dropped the crate and turned tail. His revolver was out of its holster before he was even back in the dimness. The path was a little rugged, and he stumbled on the way down, catching his weight on the wall.   
  
"John!" he called, just before turning the corner.   
  
It was a small, empty cavern save for the light of John's lantern, and it reeked of acid. On the ground at his feet lie a pile of grey-brown fur, complete with four little smaller mounds. All of them were still, the corpses no older than a few days.   
  
"Aw," Arthur said, heart dropping. "Why'd you have to show me that?"  
  
John trudged over to him solemnly, chest heaving for breath, and only then did Arthur realize he was holding something in the crook of his arm. John passed the precious cargo over to him and Arthur took it in his arms carefully.   
  
It was a puppy, no bigger than a muskrat. Its eyes were closed, but its chest was rising and falling rapidly. It twitched its ear, and then its leg, apparently still alive. 

"Poor boy," Arthur said quietly, looking to its mother and littermates in the corner. He was becoming short of breath down here, his own lungs struggling to find oxygen in the damp air, and he tucked the puppy under his arm. "We gotta get you out of here."  
  
When he looked up, John was leaning against the wall, his eyes starting to bug out of his face as he stumbled towards the light, and Arthur felt heart start beating like a racehorse in his chest as he realized what had happened- what was going to happen if they didn't get themselves back into fresh air.   
  
"We gotta get  _you_ outta here," he realized aloud, and snatched John by the collar to drag him up the mineshaft.   
  
  
Bessie was waiting for them, standing next to Penny. Scott was unconscious, with a black eye, draped behind the saddle gracefully, as befitted a man of his stature, and Bessie was grinning like a bobcat until she saw the two boys stumbling out, heads lolling like a couple of drunkards. Arthur still had John's shirt clenched in one fist, a little unconscious puppy in the other, and his head was spinning as he gasped for air. Eventually, his vision stilled, and he finally let John go free so he could plop down in the dirt and catch his own breath.   
  
"You boys alright?" Bessie called from the cliff below, pushing herself away from her horse. Arthur gave her a nod, too content with how fresh air felt in his lungs to say anything. "Whatcha got there?"   
  
He lifted the dog up to get a good look at him, and to his delight, the creature opened his little brown eyes, squinting at the sunlight. It let out a pitiful little whimper, not too happy that it was separated from its litter.   
  
"A dog!" Arthur called, and brought it in towards his chest, his voice falling to a near croon. "It's alright little feller, you're gonna be alright."   
  
John must have stood up while he wasn't paying attention, because all of a sudden, he was standing next to him, laying a hand on his shoulder, apparently still a bit winded.   
  
"Whatcha gonna call him?"   
  
"You ain't keepin' him?" Arthur looked up in surprise, and the dog kicked at him. It was growing stronger by the second now that it wasn't breathing in those mine fumes.   
  
"Ain't much of the nurturin' type," John replied, though the affection in his eyes when he looked down at the pup said otherwise.   
  
"And I am?" Arthur scoffed. John gave him an unconvinced kind of look that Arthur refused to meet, because despite what he may say, he did have a soft spot for little critters.   
  
"Hey!" Bessie called, waving her hands to get their attention. They looked away from the dog to see her tapping her foot impatiently. "We gonna turn in this bounty together or should I collect the money myself?"  
  
  
"Think I'm gonna call him Copper," Arthur said on the way down. He left John to pick up the dynamite, much to his exasperation, and shuffled down the slope to mount up, keeping the pup clutched against his chest as they rode off.   
  
  
  
About halfway through the ride, Alan Scott woke up,  his head rolling for a moment before his eyes locked on Arthur, holding a wriggling puppy in his lap.   
  
"Hey!" he called hoarsely. "Hey, that's my damn property!"  
  
"You don't own nothin' in jail, chicken-fucker," Arthur replied, and John literally gasped aloud behind him.   
  
"What?!" He asked, appalled, and Arthur couldn't help but snort in laughter that the boy had just now figured out what this man had done to his livestock.  He laughed a little harder under his breath as John leaned out to address Scott. "No! You didn't!"   
  
Alan kicked his legs angrily, thrashing about like a wet hen, no mind the pun.   
  
"It ain't none of your god damn business!" he practically shrieked, and John clasped a hand over his mouth.   
  
"Them poor critters," he wondered.   
  
Scott was about to open his mouth to say something when Bessie reached behind her and walloped him on the head, and he was knocked out, not exactly unconscious, but not coherent by any means.   
  
  
  


 

 

  
They returned to camp around evening, their pockets a couple dollars heavier, and with the sky darkening, Arthur could feel his body starting to fail him with exhaustion. Dutch, Hosea, and Grimshaw were in the middle of a song when they pulled to a stop, and there wasn't a soul there that didn't light up at the sight of a puppy, bunch of grizzled outlaws as they were. Arthur set him on the ground so he could run around and greet everyone, his tail tucked but wagging as he wiggled about the campfire, unable to decide who he wanted to pet him. Hosea apparently presented the best opportunity, since he just about melted onto the ground to see him, and as if trying to one-up him, Copper threw himself onto his back at his feet.   
  
"I thought you three were going out for a bounty!" Dutch exclaimed, a slack grin on his face as he watched a full-grown man roll on the ground with a pup.   
  
"Yeah," Arthur said, smiling despite himself. "Well, we got a little extra on the side, too."   
  
Bessie and John settled down by the campfire, but Arthur could feel sleep catching up with him, so he took a turn towards his tent. To his delight, nobody said anything about it, though he could feel Dutch smiling behind his back, and as the tent flaps fell closed behind him, he let out a sigh. The sight of his bedroll in the dark was enough to make him just about collapse into the sheets with a blissful sigh. He barely got the covers over himself before his vision started to darken, and he closed his eyes.   
  
Before he sank completely into oblivion, however, he heard Copper whine outside his tent. He elected to ignore this, since the dog could just push the tent flap open if he wanted in, but the little critter repeated his cry about ten times before shoving his nose under the cloth to sniff and make sure Arthur was there. And then he kept on doing it, until Arthur was forced to stick his leg out into the cold to hold the flap up with one foot.   
This was apparently a great mistake on his part. The dog was upon him like a cougar on a fawn, licking and nipping at his face. It took quite a few pushes to finally get him to mind his personal space. At least to some extent. Arthur had his eyes squeezed shut stubbornly when he felt the pup curl up next to his stomach, right under where he tucked his arms. 

With an exasperated, but exhausted sigh, Arthur considered this a win and let sleep finally fall over him.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_That little shack by the river was always most beautiful at sunset. Sunrise had it charms, and evenings always had a homely quality about them, but right around dusk was always most heavenly. The sun was filtering in through the kitchen window, setting ablaze the crocheted white table cozy and the pale, wilting ivory roses that were sat upon the window sill in a little tin cup. A petal dropped from one of them, dancing to the floor like a snowflake, back and forth until it landed on Eliza's delicate eyelid. Her eyes were not closed, but they stared straight up at the ceiling above her, her hand resting by her side, her pale fingertips grazing Isaac's as if trying to lead him to heaven herself. As soon as the petal made contact, it lit up in crimson from the blood it landed in._  
  
_Arthur was certain he shouldn't be here. He has never been here before, not like this, not where Eliza and Isaac were lying on the ground with matching bullet holes in their temples. His breath grew rapid as he tried to figure out how he had gotten here. Not a lick of this made sense, Eliza should be alive, should be perfectly fine. He was here, so they should both be perfectly fine unless he had done something horribly wrong. A thought occurred and he looked down to see a revolver in his right hand. It dangled precariously in the eerie silence that engulfed the cabin this spring afternoon before he let it slip from his palm, lifting his hand to look at it._  
  
_He could not have done this. How could he have done this? Something moved in his vision, and he looked to the ground to see Isaac staring at him with big, soulful brown eyes, as alive as they had ever been though they were set in the face of a corpse._  
  
_Eliza was the one to speak, her eyes unmoving, her lips whispering words that Arthur could hear from where he stood several feet away._  
  
_"You got pretty dreams," she murmured.  
  
He didn't even have to pick the revolver up to have it back in his hand, and without even asking why, he leveled the barrel to the side of his head, finger snapping down on the trigger before he could even think. _  
  
  
He let out a gasp as he snapped up from his bedroll, his heart racing away in his chest so hard that his vision trembled with every beat, eyes too sharp for having just woken up. He clutched a hand to his chest as if he could still it manually, only to compulsively hold his hands out and check them. Once, twice. He wasn't holding a revolver. He took in his surroundings in a brief attempt to orient himself, pulling the tent flap open to check outside.   
They were in the desert. The fire was long gone cold, and everybody had retired to their tents, sound asleep. Even the horses were out like lights, though the sky wasn't quite paling with signs of morning yet. Only half of that dream was true to reality, at least as he remembered it.   
  
When he tucked back into the tent, he was surprised for half a second to see a little dusty brown puppy dancing out of his way until he remembered the day's events, and sat cross-legged on his bedroll, heart still slamming against his rib cage. He was no longer actively panicking, but he was far from relaxed, his blood pulsing away in his veins, his breath still catching in his throat, to the point that the little pup was sniffing him thoroughly to make sure he wasn't sick. In a spark of passion, Arthur reached out to pick him up, and to his surprise, the little hellion didn't thrash when he held him to his chest.   
  
The dog fell asleep there in his grasp. It took an hour or two, but with his warmth there, eventually Arthur's head slowed down, and he was able to do the same, head on his pillow, his sheet drawn over him, and a little sleeping puppy dog in his arms.  


End file.
